Small victories

This is not me. In case you were wondering.

It's a new year, as everyone knows. In fact, it's 11 days into the new year. What have you accomplished?? How many goals are you still adhering to?

I'm still in the process of deciding mine. As I mentioned before, I don't necessarily like setting firm goals; I'd rather just decide I'd like to do smoething and do it. I'd like more to decide that in the middle of the year, instead of on January 1 and becoming one of the masses. Let me set my goals on a random day in April and be unusual. Or at least, someone who thinks of herself as unusual.

January is not a good time at the gym. Every January since Ih ave been a member (10 years now!) January is inevitably SLAMMED. I don't like waiting for machines; I'm impatient by nature, I guess, and I don't want people waiting for me to get off and thus pressuring me to leave before I want to. Harrumph.

Gymgoing is a pretty necessary party of writing. Writing, as you may have guessed, is SEDENTARY. Sit at a desk, working your wrists hard, unfortunately does nothing for toned muscles or a slim waist. And if you're genetically predisposed to, uh, girth...this is something you ought to take seriously.

I joined my first gym in January 2000 (NOT as a New Year's resolution; I had awakened very late, like eleven, and wandered from my bed to the couch with a book, and I thought, "I'll be dead of inaction before I'm thirty" and marched to New York Sports Club and joined.) and, but for an eight-month period in 2005, have been a somewhat-regular goer since then. I am somewhat poor (I'm a writer!), and as a result of that, I'm cheap, and for me, paying a large sum of money to a gym every month, automatic withdrawal or not, pretty much ensures I will be at that gym, calculator in hand. New York gyms are expensive. when I joined NYSC, I think it was $67 a month, so I would say to myself, okay, if I go twice a week for four weeks, that makes it a little more than $8 each time I go. And I would picture handing over $8 every time I walked in that door. The idea was abhorrent. So, okay, if I go four times a week for four weeks, that's $4 each time I go. That was more palatable. Going five times a week was better, because that was $3. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, that was the the entirety of my motivation.

I kept going regularly until 2003, when I started grad school. Then I was faced with a dilemma: go to NYU's (free) gym or keep my gym membership? And quickly that dilemma was subsumed with reality: I had no time! Argh. My membership fee had gone up to about $77 a month, and I made it to NYSC once a week, thereby bringing my per-visit total to just under $20. Ridiculous. And yet I continued.

One of my prouder moments was wearing the same skirt to an end-of-program party that I wore to a beginning-of-program party. I will tell you why this is at all remarkable: I had only gone once a week, but that was once a week more than many of my classmates. I loved them, and I don't want to make fun, but...let's just say a lot of them were not wearing the same clothes at the end.

Okay, so the program ended and my dreams of graduating and landing a primo writing gig were not realized. I was quite sure that I would sell something right away, however, so I decided just to temp for a while. Temping is not great fun. When it works well, it's great (a salary but no commitment) but there are huge down sides: no benefits, no stability, occasional involuntary dry spells. And the salary is pretty low. NYSC kept raising its rates, and I kept getting more irritated at them, and in one involuntary dry spell I got annoyed to quit.

This was mid-summer, 2005. I didn't know if it would be forever, but I thought that might be a possibility. And I stayed out of the gym world until December. What prompted me to go back? Well, I had gone to Brazil with my family the previous summer, and my dad took pictures. He showed them to us at Christmas. There were some with all of us at the beach. Among them...was a picture of me, taken from the back... in a swimming suit.

Oh boy.

I joined Crunch the next week.

This was 2006. I lost a lot of weight going to Crunch, gained it back, have lost a lot of it again. Crunch promised me they would never, ever raise their prices, and that lasted for 2 years; now they raise them every January. I still pay less than I paid at the end of my NYSC run.

Why am I regaling you with this, dear reader? Why, for the simple reason that I have made a new resolution. It's been increasingly difficult to get to the gym at night; I return home from a day at work and I want to write and go to the gym, adn most nights I can't get in both. I always have the best of intentions, but if I'm writing well and on a roll, I don't want to break free; and if I decide to go to the gym, often it's a *process* that takes at least as much time convincing myself to go as it would take me at the gym. And then I decide, no, I'll go tomorrow. It won't be so cold tomorrow. I'll write tonight. No, I'll take it easy tonight. I'll read. No, I'll...I'll...something else.

It's been incredibly wasteful and frustrating, and the cheap side of me realizes that going twice a week makes it more than $10 every visit! Three times a week, it's still $8-plus! I need to go five times a week!

So I'm going at my lunch hour. I have a gym 3 blocks away from the office, so I just hustle over, change, run on the treadmill for 35 minutes, quickly stretch, quickly shower, and hustle back. It's been great so far. Then I get home and I have no excuse: I have to write. And I got a great laptop for Christmas, which is new enough and enough of a shiny toy that I actually want to!

Victory all 'round!

Blizzards and security breaches

Okay, my bad blogger thing continues. Last week I was on vacation; yesterday I was in transit. I did start an entry last week, and it was irredeemably boring. Consider last week’s inaction a “save” from a boring post.

I am now back into the swing of things after my Christmas holiday. I always try to bank up my vacation days so that I can take a couple of weeks at the end of the year. Happily we have a fairly liberal vacation policy at the office, so that doesn’t mean I’m chained to my desk for the rest of the year; I can still take a few days off here and there. But the big trip is always at Christmas.

Travel karma totally went my way this year. I was scheduled to fly out on a 5 pm flight on December 19. Now, I normally don’t book pm flights in the wintertime; I always try for the first flight out. However, there simply wasn’t one available this year, so I reluctantly took the 5 pm. I wanted it to be that Saturday, rather than wait for Monday, because the closer you get to Christmas the worse the travel conditions become. So, 5 pm the 18th it was. And everything looked completely fine until the Wednesday before, when they started hinting around about snow. I still wasn’t worried. “We may get a flurry or two,” they said. “It depends on how closely it hews to the coast.” Thursday: “Well, we’re probably going to get a bit of a snowstorm.” Friday: “Buy food and blankets and batteries! We’re in for a Nor’Easter!”

I decided, at 1 am Saturday, to see if I could rebook. Delta had helpfully canceled my 5 pm flight and put me on a 1 pm. (though somehow the idea that SOMEHOW THEY SHOULD LET ME KNOW didn’t occur to them.) But the 1 pm went from Newark to Atlanta to Nashville to Salt Lake, which didn’t seem to be the most practical route. So I rebooked online to go, at 8 am, JFK to Chicago to Salt Lake, with a two-hour layover. It was the best we could do, and I was happy to take it. The thing is, by this time it was 2:30 am and I still had crap to do. And by “crap” I mean “pack.” (This does not mean I was procrastinating. Remember, I had thought I had until 5 pm. I was not procrastinating! I was doing other things! And by "other things" I mean "watching Mad Men.") I rushed around and finished everything by 3:30 and got to sleep around 4:15, with the alarm set for 6:00. Yah-hoo. I didn’t sleep much on the first flight (on which they booked me first class, for some reason) and I was just trashed in Chicago. (I expect that by this I join an illustrious list of people who have been trashed in Chicago.) There was a gate area they had cleared of seats, and a few people were flat on the floor there. I walked by a couple of times, staring longingly at prostrate (sleeping) people, and then said, “I have no pride” and joined them, and I slept for an hour and a half on the dirty floor of the Chicago airport. And I would do it again.

I came back yesterday and flew into Newark. My boss was scheduled to return from his vacation, flying into Newark, on Sunday, but they didn’t arrive until 3 am Monday because of the crazy security breach. I had almost scheduled my return flight for Sunday, but didn’t; I figured that Sunday might be one of those awful “everyone’s coming back at the same time” days and Monday might be better. Now, the Good Worker part of me (whether it’s a big or small part of me, I haven’t yet determined) said, Monday is the first day of the work week; I should be back on Monday! I should arrive at the office at 9 am, ready to retackle my job and my life! But I didn’t. On a whim, I decided to give myself that one extra day and fly back on Monday. Oh, how the whim paid off! Thank you, Travel Gods; and Good Worker, go sit in a corner and eat cherry pie with Early To Bed and Regular Gym Goer while I figure out what to do with you.

Of course, this could mean nothing. But I’m taking it as an auspicious sign…a good 2010. How often do Travel Gods rule in your favor? Almost never, I tell you. I should also play the lottery, play in the road and take up smoking, because at the moment odds are in my favor.

Writing Groups Part II (Two days late)

Caught up in holiday madness. I knew I needed to post on Monday, to keep with my new goal, but I was occupied pretty much all day. I am home for the holidays (because I caught a flight early Saturday a.m. out of New York, thereby escaping the blizzard/travel insanity, thank heaven) but I spent Monday and Tuesday occupied with the nephew, who is almost two and can't be left alone for a second. Adorable, if exhausting. But, I owe you all a post this week, and a post you shall get.

I said in my earlier post that writing groups are a tremendously valuable part of the writing process, and I meant it. For my first book, Did I Expect Angels? I know I wouldn't have finished the book without the group. Around Christmas of 2001, I had a general idea and theme in my head, and over that Christmas break from work I sat down at the family computer and wrote about 15 pages. And then I left it. (This was my habit in those days: starting projects and never seeing them through, all the while thinking, "I want to be a writer." Of course, writers have to write--and more than that, they have to finish things. I knew this, but couldn't quite get over that hurdle.) So I had 15 pages and a vague sense of dissatisfaction with my life.

Fast forward to Memorial Day of 2002. I had lunch with a friend, who told me she was also working on some writing projects. We talked it over and agreed that we needed some extra help getting things done (in my case) and getting feedback (hers). So we each recruited a friend and set up an online writers' group. We set up a schedule where every Monday one of us would email the others a selection of pages, maybe 15 - 20 at a time, and the others would have a week to read and write a critique. We'd email our critiques to everyone the following Monday and the next person would email her pages.

Suddenly I had a deadline! I sent out my 15 pages the first week, and I had 3 weeks more to produce 15 pages. And I actually did. I got going and wrote pages! For the first time I had an actual direction and motivation to finish something, and it was wonderful. And I discovered that I was not a great writer. I remember being told that it read like a short story, because I *talked about* things happening, rather than putting the reader in the moment and showing what happened. "Everything just kind of zooms past," was what they said, as well as I can remember. This was a revelation. I had had writing classes in college, but we'd done short stories, where it's more acceptable to sum (some) things up just to conserve space; with a 4000k word limit in many magazines, you know, some summation is in order. But this doesn't apply nearly as much in novels, which I was trying to write.

Through this writers' group, I finished my book. I worked on it actively from that June through January of 2003. I am very grateful to this group.

I cannot say that we were free of drama. There was one member whom I inadvertently offended. Several times. Consistently, weeks on end, it turns out. I have no idea when it began, but apparently it grew and grew until we hit the boiling point, and she sent out comments about my latest installation that ... well, they weren't constructive, they weren't helpful; they were just angry. "I don't like this...I've already read this so many times I don't care..." (yes, she had, but part of the writing group experience is reading revisions) "... I don't agree with this sentiment and I don't care to read anything that says it" etc.

I was confused. My friend told me that this woman was incredibly angry with me because I hadn't begun my critiques with positive comments first. Apparently this is a rule of most writing groups; but I had no idea. And no one mentioned it to me after they noticed that I was ignoring/ignorant of the rule. Angry Woman had sent my friend a draft of an email that she wanted to send to me, telling me how rude I was and how I was affecting her mental health; she was agoraphobic and couldn't hold down a job and unhappy and I was making everything worse. My friend told her not to send the note, that I was just more blunt than other people. So she didn't send it; instead she got angrier and angrier every time I didn't start with the positives. Sigh.

Once I was aware this was a problem, I sent her a note. I apologized for having harmed her so grievously (though I didn't include the sarcasm, I promise I didn't), said I was unaware she'd been having these problems, and maybe she could let me know when I offended her, and we could just start again. Well, this made it worse. She emailed back a nasty note. I wish I remembered what it said! It would make this post a lot more amusing. But I don't remember, so I can only talk about it. (Writing lesson! Talking about things -- aka "telling" -- is not as interesting as showing them!) I do remember she said something like, "I was just being blunt. Maybe you can't handle bluntness." Angry Woman emailed us all and literally asked the other two to take sides, because she couldn't handle being in a group that tolerated my kind of behavior. Please let her know, she said, if we wanted her out of the group. She ended the note with, "I await your decision."

Of course my two other friends wouldn't kick her out. They told her the decision had to be hers, so she needed to let us know if she wanted to continue or not. Within a day there was an email labeled "resignation" in my inbox. (as I think about it, that's not terribly specific; she could have been announcing her resignation to the idea of remaining in the group that included such an ignorant boor as myself.) Consensus on the sane side was that she had some problems bigger than this, and had been looking for a reason/way to get out of the group.

We continued on for a while. It was a lot harder with only three members, however. Somehow, having two weeks in between submitting was quite a bit harder than having three. More than three would have been too long, but two was way too short. We soldiered on as best we could, but also found that only two outside opinions weren't as helpful as having three (even if one of them was angry).

A few months later we recruited another writer, who wrote restaurant reviews (my dream job!), and she was low-drama and low-key and gave helpful critiques. Unfortunately, soon after this, I started grad school. (Unfortunate for me being in the group; not unfortunate for me.) My writing in grad school was focused on stage and screen, and I simply didn't have time to continue writing prose. And if I sent the group my playwriting, by the time I got their comments back I had already submitted that piece of writing and gotten graded on it--the program moved fast. So I had to bow out, and I was sad to do it.

I have great memories of that group. We saw each other through some interesting times and crises and frustrations, buoyed each other through some things, and then I managed to ruin someone's life. I guess I still love them since it was not *my* life that was ruined.

writing groups!

Ever had this happen?

You have a great idea, you’re on a tear, you’re particular inspired by a tear-jerking movie, you’re drunk (ahem) or just delirious because this is the third day you’ve gotten less than 4 hours sleep. You go to your computer and write something at breakneck speed, and you’re convinced this is the greatest thing you have ever produced. You finish the piece, sigh happily and hit Print, then go (back) to bed to revel in that feeling, that joy, that knowledge: You Are A Great Writer.

Oh, the pain of the mornings.

Now imagine a slightly different scenario. You’ve labored on something for days/weeks/months/YEARS and you know it’s the best thing you can do. You’ve gone through it dozens of times, found typos, found inconsistencies, realized that perhaps this line where Kaylee screams “I’ll find that rare stolen coin if it’s the last thing I do!” (a) reads like she’s a psycho or (b) is perhaps a tad on the melodramatic side or (c) is a placeholder you wrote because that is in fact what she’s looking for but you planned to come back later and make it a little less like an infodump/less freakishly awful. And then you forgot about it and on the seventh re-read you found it.

And suddenly you think, “What else have I left in there that I forgot about?” If you have a long piece, you just can’t remember all the places you do something like that.

What to do?

Beta readers. Readers are incredibly important. And make sure it’s someone who won’t smile and say, “I loved it!” Because as good as that little ego stroking may feel, ultimately it doesn’t help. I assure you, agents and editors will not smile and say “I loved it!” when they come upon someone shrieking, “I’ll find that rare stolen coin if it’s the last thing I do!”

Now, it’s also a big favor to ask, having someone read a completed 100,000-word manuscript. Friends will often do it for several reasons: they’ve heard you talk about this piece for days/weeks/months/YEARS and they’re curious. They’d like to write, but never have. They’re good readers. Or perhaps they have nothing else to do. But nine times out of ten, their feedback isn’t going to be that great. Why? Simply because they don’t do this very often.
A better option is to have people reading what you’re writing as you go. It’s less painful to read six pages, rather than two hundred fifty. The reader can also pay closer attention to little things. It’s hard for your readers to get the big picture (actually, nigh on impossible) but…because you have also read their submissions as the weeks go by, they wn’t be as offended when you ask them to read the whole thing in a big gulp.

I will talk more about the writing groups I’ve been part of…later.

My First Book

Monday Blogging
Look at me! My goal is off to a good start.

I don’t quite remember what the impetus was to write my first book. My English class had been writing stories for a few weeks, and I really enjoyed it, so maybe it was that. But I do remember sitting down at our relatively new computer and saying to myself, “I’m going to write a book,” and starting to type. I was 14 years old.

The short story unit had been fun. We took a few weeks to talk about characters and plot, and I set about writing a murder mystery. I was very into Agatha Christie at the time (though I only read the Hercule Poirot mysteries, rather than the bland Miss Marple—or I thought she was bland at the time; maybe she’s not and I need to revisit?) and I was determined to do the same. I started with a catchy title—BIRTHDAY MURDER—and began writing.

I don’t remember the plot of Birthday Murder. I revised it a few times, and I don’t remember the first plot or the second or the third. I do remember the first ending, however, because I cribbed it directly from Ms. Christie. And this was not a generic ending, where one could think that I just arrived at that idea independently. No, it involved a murder happening in silence, several hours before it was discovered; false blood strewn about the room (an unnaturally bright shade of red, because a chemical had been added to keep it fresh); and a balloon with a stopper that got pulled from a cord stretched out the window, emitting an ear-splitting, animal-sounding scream to bring people running when the killer was among them, so they wouldn’t suspect. Very creative, Agatha! Me, using it again? Not so much.

At some point, I realized that it was a bad idea to plagiarize. Unfortunately, it was right before handing in the final draft. I needed an ending, one that I could just scribble down to turn in the next day. Hmm, how did I handle that? I don’t remember that either. I do remember that I changed the motive. Rather than a crazy, involved family secret being exposed (or some such nonsense) I changed it to the covers-all “For Kicks.” Yep. A semi-direct quote, as close as I can remember it: “She did it for fun. FOR FUN.”

Take a moment to let that wash over you. High drama.

And yet Mrs. Morris liked it enough to read my story aloud to the class. I’ve recounted this to people before, and every time I tell it I remember sitting at my desk, staring at the faux-wood surface, the heat of blood in my cheeks as I was embarrassed and thrilled at the same time. Mrs. Morris didn’t actually tell the class whose story she was reading, but they all knew (probably from my reaction) and they complimented me profusely after it was over. I was in love. I’m not sure with whom. Maybe with myself. More likely, with writing, given what I did next.

I think it was the next Friday night that I sat down to write a book. And that was my goal. No short story this time. I turned on the computer…and looked at a blank screen. (Black, back in those days. Although I was able to change both background and character colors, and I enjoyed messing with that a lot. Mint green on pink? Red on black, black on red? Orange on blue? Best part: my mom didn’t know how to fix it.)

My problem was plotting. Not actually ironing out what would happen when, but the very idea. It’s an age-old problem for writers of all sorts. It’s not quite writers’ block, but this general feeling of “I should be writing something!” but not knowing what that something would be. I’ve had that feeling since, but a few years ago I actually realized that I already have more ideas for books and screenplays than I could ever finish. The problem is not getting ideas; the problem is making ideas work. (Therefore, when someone says, “I have a proposal: I’ll give you ideas and you write them, and we’ll split the proceeds 50/50” you should RUN. First, the idea of “proceeds” is far-fetched in far too many cases; second, ideas are as easy to come by as urine [Really? Am I really going to use that?] and the ideas are not the work.)

So…at that point, where was an idea? This was easily solved. My sister gave it to me. She was 17 at the time and she said, rather offhandedly, “A guy’s wife gets kidnapped, and their baby dies, and he gets revenge and kills the people involved and then he’s prosecuted and he escapes to Nicaragua, fighting with the Contras.”

That is the plot I chose.

I’ll just let that sink in. More high drama. Higher.

Forget the fact that I didn’t know the first thing about Nicaragua, the Contras, kidnapping, marriage. Or that my idea of revenge involved putting toothpaste in inconvenient places. Forget that I didn’t do any research. I could do this!

It took a month or two, and I had written my book. Now, I was (am) a softie and I couldn’t have a sad ending. So the guy (Alan) couldn’t be banished to Nicaragua. In fact, he couldn’t be a bad guy. Therefore the person on whom he gets his revenge must be a total horror. I chose his mother-in-law—divorced from the father-in-law, because the father-in-law is rich and therefore a good guy—and yes, she was so awful that I had Alan’s wife, Jody, scream “You total bitch!” though I couldn’t make myself have an actual swear word in the dialogue, so I changed it to witch. Whoo.

It is also noteworthy that I didn’t think this would be a YA novel. I thought this would take the publishing world by storm when it went out and bio on the book jacket (which I had helpfully written out at the end of the manuscript) said, “Yes, folks, this lady’s fourteen.” Direct quote. Sigh.

Now, off to my readers! I gave it to my mom, and said, “I want your real feedback. What you really think.” She made a face that I have since made, that “I don’t want to hurt you but I don’t want to encourage you either” face, and said, “It’s…amateurish.” I nodded and thought about it. I gave it to a 14-year-old friend, who loved it. And I gave it to my 9th grade teacher, who also loved it and told me to publish it. (Whose opinions did I latch onto? Whose do you think?) She didn’t, however, tell me *how* to publish it. Problem.

A bigger problem: My little brother, who loved messing with the computer, then erased our hard drive. I was 14, so he must have been 11. He was very into computer games (specifically Digger, the only computer game I’ve ever gotten into, and “Bushido” which I don’t remember except that it involved samurai swords.) and decided one day to clean up the hard drive. The next day, I turned on the computer and when it didn’t take me to LeMenu, I called for my dad, who called for my mom, who called for Bill. Bill told us, so cavalierly, “I just erased an extra command.” (The words on screen said, I am not kidding, “Missing command.”)

My book was gone.

My mom’s eyes were saucers. I stared at the computer, that dark screen that was missing THE MOST IMPORTANT COMMAND (apparently no commands are “extra”), silent. My mom looked between me and Bill, worried about the possible carnage, and took me away and said, “If you don’t say anything to him, I’ll take you to Baskin Robbins.” (worth noting: she took him, too, in the same trip.) I turned around and went to my room and closed the door.

I was able to retrieve the printed manuscript from one of my friends. I spent many more hours retyping the same book into the computer, since Bill was now forbidden to mess with the programming. He kept on playing “Bushido,” though, and as revenge I hid the floppy disk (a five-incher!) which was more effective than toothpaste.

So I had gotten my book back, in a way, but by then the spirit was gone. Maybe Bill saved me from myself; the thing was dumb. I really cannot imagine what an agent’s response would have been, since a form rejection seems too nice. (Although I do have an agent friend. Maybe I’ll ask her.) No copy survives, only memories. It remains where it belongs: under the proverbial bed.

Bad blogger, bad!

Why the Weeble? Why not?

I am a bad blogger. Okay, it's not every count, but I am a bad blogger. My flaunting of #2 and #4 is particularly flagrant and egregious. It's been partly just that I've been busy, yes, but...I admit, it's been mostly laziness. And so, dear reader (how many are left? Three? On a good day?) I am now making ... wait for it ... a goal. We'll get back to that in a moment.

I do not set many goals. Not firm, "I will do X by Y date" goals, anyway. I say, "Hmm. I would like to start running." And I start a running class and I do their assignments and soon I consider myself a runner, as I now do. I don't like setting concrete X-by-Y-date goals, for some reason, even though a lot of people say that's the way to get things done. I have a couple of friends who do that every year, make long lists of things to accomplish that year, and I am not exaggerating when I say NOT ONE OF THOSE GOALS gets met. I hope I would actually meet goals if I set them, but I have this bad example in front of me and I am therefore...disinclined, shall we say?, to set them.

But I am now setting a goal. Monday is blog day. Holy cow. It's official, because I just put it in my calendar! Not Monday morning, because mornings are not my friend, but Monday afternoons. I will keep this blog mainly writing-related, because it unnerves me to have personal things out there on the internet for anyone and his pervy neighbor to see, but there will be the occasional personal tidbit. If it's ever juicy or exciting, well -- let's just say, that means something (anything!) in my life will have changed.

I do have things to write about, I do. I have a terrific critique group that meets every Wednesday, since the end of May, and I could blog some stories about them/writing groups in general (I've been in a few). I could blog about the process of research I'm involved in. I could write some memories I have of writing--specifically, my first (TERRIBLE, AWFUL, HORRIBLE) book that I wrote when I was 14. Actually, thinking about it, I will definitely share that story. It's pretty funny. The book I started when I was 25 and never finished (and never will. It's also bad. Some portions are okay, but my, I did like my "said" adverbs--ie, "she said angrily," "he said briskly" [see all of Harry Potter 5 for a more extended example. No hate here; I love HP and JKR, but she loves her adverbs even more than I did at 25 and apparently her editor couldn't say no at that point], which was jarring to see since they are now a pet peeve.)

I am/we are finished, yes, FINISHED with the Madame Curie script. It has been a great experience, writing with Anil, and we are thinking of new future projects and collaborations. (no news I can report yet on results, though.) One may be a script I initially finished at NYU; I showed it to Anil, and he and I talked it through and discussed some things I could do to make it better/more market-friendly. There are some very good suggestions, some concrete suggestions, but no "just change this word here" suggestions, which are the easy ones to implement. So I have to figure out how, exactly, to make the changes. In the meantime, I have a first draft of another script, started long ago (BEFORE we began Mme Curie) that I'd like to finish so I can look it over and see the many places I went wrong, fix those, then take it to my writing group so they can point out even more places where I went wrong, help me fix them, and then perhaps have Anil look at that one, too, for more ideas.

Meanwhile I continue to write my second book. It's turning into a good thing, I think/hope/dare to dream. It is HARD to write, on many different levels. I had no idea how difficult it would be when I started. I am no longer cruising through with 1000+ words a day, my earlier pace, since I am revising the first half because I had taken a couple of wrong turns earlier. Right now the first half feels like (get ready for an extended simile) a dress I've sewn where I had one pattern established, and I finished only the skirt, and now I have to go pull apart the skirt and take out some sections and replace them with better sections, and I have to get a new pattern for the top so I have to change some other parts of the skirt so they will match the top.

Make sense? I do love my similes.

All right. I also plan to do an experiment. I will announce it soon. Maybe even before next Monday! Wow!

Hot and Humid

After a rainy June and a delightful July, we're into a disgusting August. We've had many, many days of heat and humidity. I know New York has had worse summers--I've lived through them--but every time the real heat kicks in, it's just gross. I live in an old apartment building. It was built in 1905, give or take a year, and central AC was just not part of any building plan more than 100 years ago. (Happily, space was, which makes my spacious and cheap apartment a real rarity.) So we have window units that dehumidify rooms and make it comfortable. It's a blessing to have the window units, and we have them in all our bedrooms and the living room, so things could be worse. However, we do not have one in our kitchen and the setup of the place doesn't allow the kitchen to get cooled by any of the units we do have, so the kitchen is always sweltering. Bake something and it's a thousand times worse. So don't bake, you say. I know, but last Sunday I bought a few delicious peaches from the farmer's market and I desperately needed to make a peach crumble. So I didn't preheat the oven until the thing was almost ready to pop in, kept the kitchen doors closed (there are two), and once I stuck it in the oven I left and just let it combust in there. Last Sunday was a great writing day, too; I'd be working on my computer in my room, air conditioning going full blast. Walk down the hall, which is also cool due to the living room unit. Walk through the kitchen door to check on the crumble and melt. Oy, vey. Spoon a portion of peach crumble onto the plate, take it back into the cool bedroom and eat. Repeat.

They've been promising us rain for a few days to cool everything off. And we did have one impressive rainstorm two nights ago; I haven't seen rain that intense ever, and I lived for 18 months in Costa Rica. The thunder and lightning began when I was in the shower. I heard rumbling, but it was so sustained I thought there must be fireworks in Central Park. They'll do that on random occasions in the summer, and I didn't think much of it. But then I got out of the shower, and with the water no longer running I could tell what it was. And then lightning began. Rather than turn on the Yankees in my room (because while my room has windows, they look over an air shaft and you can't see much, and the configuration of the TV and air conditioner and bureau and bookshelf prohibit me from opening them) I went to the living room to write on the laptop and listen to the rain.

I have to say, since Costa Rica, rain evokes rather intense feelings for me. Countless days we were out in it, trudging through a downpour on our way to visit somebody, only to get stood up and be left wondering what to do with our newfound extra hour. We could knock on doors, but that was inefficient. We could visit somebody, but they usually lived quite a distance away. So we would do one or the other anyway, under umbrellas four feet in diameter (not exaggerating) and stil get drenched from mid-thigh down. We wore skirts and sandals, Tevas, so it didn't ruin our shoes, but so many times I just wanted dry feet. Countless days I longed to go home and change into sweats and slippers and read. And now, more than twelve years later, when it rains I experience that yearning to go home and change into sweats and slippers and read. And when it's at all possible, I do and I just revel in it. When I'm home to begin with, as I was the other night, I just sink into a couch or bed or chair and appreciate being dry.

I know it's strange. But remaining soggy for 9 months at a time will do that to a person. Even twelve years later.

But that rainstorm did not knock out the humidity. The humidity remains in a giant wet blanket enveloping the city. It was supposed to rain yesterday, and it didn't, and it's still as humid as ever. They're promising more storms today (more? how about "some"?) and tomorrow and a dry weekend and week ahead. Please, let it rain! (when I can go inside and change into sweats.)

So...in writing-related news...the new book continues apace. I've gotten some great feedback on it and I'm actually excited to keep going forward. I figure, if I keep what I've written (always a question), I'm about half done with the first draft. Yay! Of course, I've written out everything that I knew was going to happen. I now know the ending, but what lies in between...I don't know. I'm standing at the edge of a gaping black morass, wondering what on earth to write. Exciting stuff. I just arrived at that point two days ago. We'll see where I go from here.

Marie Curie continues apace. My screenwriters' group is reading it and we'll get together next week to discuss. Anil and I are going to talk this Friday and have a long phone conversation where we discuss my draft and his, and who is right and who wins. (this is not exactly what we discuss, and this is not what it feels like, but sometimes it's fun to make little 'notches' each time I win one and he wins one. All in good fun.) We figure that Hollywood is on vacation, and we're aiming for a new round of submissions in September. And September is when the movies in theatres turn serious, so hopefully some dramas will perform well and shake loose this "I will only produce a comedy, because comedy is the only thing in the world that sells! Drama is a dirty word!" attitude. Please, people, someone needs to break from the herd. And if that person broke with Marie (our version of Marie, not someone else's), that would be fantastic.

Also in writing-related news, I am developing carpal tunnel syndrome in my left hand/wrist. Exciting stuff! I went to an orthopedist a week ago for a sharp pain in my wrist, and he said it was tendinitis and to let it rest and leave it alone. Well, a few days later, I began developing a tingling sensation in my fingertips...which hasn't gone away. Classic carpal tunnel symptom. I don't have the tingling in my right hand, knock wood. So I've ordered a wrist brace from Doc Ortho (a real brand!) and have started doing carpal tunnel exercises and stretches. We'll see. All of my injuries come from sitting. Hmm.

Enjoy the last weeks of summer! I will, as soon as it rains again.