I know where I want to live....

Today, while my third graders were taking a "practice" version of the standardized test that will decide their futures, I glanced up and saw where I want to spent the rest of my life. It was printed right there on the stack of maps hanging above the chalk board....Rand McNally's Simplified World.

Doesn't it sound peaceful and euphoric? I spent the next fifteen minutes imagining what life was like in Rand McNally's Simplified World. I bet for starters, there were no border wars or land disputes. Because everthing was spelled out right there in vivid primary colors. You really can't argue about the big solid black lines that emphasize the permanence of boundaries.

I don't think there will be standardized tests in the Rand McNally Simplified World, because the one thing I have learned about standardized tests is that there is nothing standard about them. There are so many exceptions and other issues...

There will be no complications in Rand McNally's Simplified World. I guess that would be pretty obvious, but think about all the things that complicate life and imagine them gone. Like illnesses. Demands on time. Conflicting soccer schedules. Not a problem in RMSW. All computer programs will be compatible with all computers, regardless of age and operating systems. All video games would likewise work in any system sitting around the house. There would be NO free agency in football, baseball or basketball, and Most Importantly, the American League would match their rules to the National League and get rid of those pretty boy DH's. Pitchers would be well rounded ball players once again. AND, there would be no BCS computers telling us who the number one team in College Football is. It would already be known, because the pollers would all agree. The point system for the Ryder cup team might also be a bit more understandable. Hmm, did you notice how the most complicated things in life revolve around war and sports. I'm starting to wonder if there are any men in RMSW.

There are some days that this would sound boring. But this week does not contain any of those days.

I'm going to pack. The place may not exist, but hey, at least I have a map...

They should call it Job Security

If you read the article referenced above, you'll see it's a study by cardiologists. They were studying the effects of a low calorie diet on the heart and longevity. Not a temporary, weight loss low calorie diet, but a lifestyle of eating well balanced nutrient dense food, but less of it. Like 1400 to 2000 calories a day. The typical Westerner eats from 2000 to 3000 calories a day.

They found that the hearts of those who ate less were about fifteen years "younger" than the regular eaters. Hmm. Interesting, but that's not what got my attention.

After stating all the benefits of this lifestyle, they say it is NOT recommended for the general public. Instead, normal people should just moderately cut calories and exercise moderately. My cynical self says, Well of course the cardiologists don't want Americans being healthier longer. It seriously impacts their abilities to own and feed their Hummers.

But someone pointed out to me that perhaps they make the recommendation because they don't think Americans would do the healthier thing. It's not part of the American dream to want less. It's too hard.

Hogwash. This is America. We don't do ANYTHING moderately. I think the moderation would be harder. We are an all or nothing people. We don't moderately jog, we run marathons. We don't do anything small when we could do bigger and better.

Maybe the truth is, with low calorie eating, people would be hungry, and grouchy. Can you say immoderate Road Rage? And then, no one would have a calorie budget for McD's and other window foods, (food that passes through more than one window before consumption) so there would be millions of high school students unemployed and unable to purchase bling and baggie jeans and computer games. The entire economy could collapse, all because some cardiologist studied the heart.

Well, all this talk about food makes me hungry...

Quote of the Day

You know it's really bad when the only reason you log onto your very own blog is that you want to read the quote of the day. As if the eight that get emailed straight to me each day aren't enought. I am a quote junkie.

I started a word document a few years ago of assorted writing quotes, mostly fun and inspirationl. It's up to about fifty pages now. And I still open it up and read around. Since it's Saturday, thought I'd share a few of my favorites. Then I'm going for a nice six mile run, because it's just too pretty outside to sit in the cave all day.

I call my office a cave. It was my mother's bedroom when she was alive, but now it has my desk and file cabinets and her $3,000 adjustable bed (with massage unit) that seems to be unsellable. But it's a great place to stack things. The room is a cave because it's 16x16 with one (ONE!) window, the smallest allowed by the building code. CAVE!

I promised quotes:

"Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe,
polite, obedient, and sterile."
--Sinclair Lewis

"Nothing gives an author so much pleasure as to find
his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors."
--Benjamin Franklin

Autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other
people.
-- Philip Guedalla

People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.
-- Bob Hope

Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.
-- Barbara Tober

Nothing much happens in Jane Austen's books, and yet, when you come
to the bottom of the page, you eagerly turn it to learn what will
happen next. Nothing very much does and again you eagerly turn the
page. The novelist who has the power to achieve this has the most
precious gift a novelist can possess.
--W. Somerset Maugham

I'll post some more the next time I have nothing good of my own to say.

Maybe I should make it Monday and Wednesday.

Lesson learned. Sunday's aren't good nights to plan on blogging. If someone were paying me and it were a job, I suppose I could make it more of a priority. But it's the NFL playoffs. The final feast of football before the famine known as basketball and hockey season. And the Olympics. I am probably the only person in America who cannot stand to watch the Olympics on television. Now if I were to be given tickets, good seats, etc, I could be persuaded to watch in person. But I'm just not a spectator lately. It's like life is too short to watch everyone else have all the fun. I have things I want to do. And people to do them with.

But we're supposed to be spectators, aren't we? Isn't that why there is such a glut of fan paraphenalia out there? Even things we could do ourselves every day, like Nascar. I know, we can't drive 200 miles an hour in circles everyday, but we drive. We just don't get paid obscene amounts of money for people to live vicariously through me.

I would rather get my vicarious living for free. Checked out of the library. Or at Barnes and Noble. I'm just waiting for my Pride and Prejudice action figures. Mr. Darcy rides and swims.

Today my Spam name is Restful Waters...

No, I promise, this won't spur on another blog. I have my 4.8 blogs to keep up with. I don't write enough on the one's I have, don't need any more, thank you kindly. But I am experiencing a Restful Waters feeling of peace.

I've been rewriting a huge chunk of the WWII book and it's finally all coming together. There have been at least four different endings, with different combinations of marriage and children and it finally dawned on me. The story ended about thirty thousand words before I typed the words the end.

Can you say, Not Good?

Like figuring out how to start a book, I think figuring out the end of a book is just as hard. I guess for mysteries, it's not that hard, you solve the crime and book done. But for something like this, where I have the stories of the main characters mapped out for the next twenty years, it came as a shock to learn that the story I'm telling in this book ended oh, before the war.

So, with that in mind, I finally figured out the way to get all the main characters together for a great ending that didn't sound too phony or forced. It brings in all the skills of the characters that I have been cultivating and showing off all through the book. I guess I just wasn't paying attention to my own fiction.

Yeah, I needed another blog like I needed a hole in my head...

Yep. I couldn't even keep my resolution to blog on Sunday's and Tuesday's but I found time to start another blog. Oh well. It's a place to store my funny spam stories. And put things out for one of my online groups. But if you want to look, feel free.

I have finally figured out all the things wrong with my World War II novel and am hard at work fixing them before my crit group meeting this week. I'm hoping that I can get my edits caught up to where they are in the story so I don't have to back track too much. But then again, it's like the book has changed so much since they started I have to give them all credit for keeping up as well as they have.

New Year's Revolutions

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who make New Year's resolutions and those who don't. I am one of those who does. Sure, a lot of them get broken, some even before the end of our annual New Year's party. I don't, however, get carried away with them, like the famous New England Preacher, Jonathan Edwards. http://www.reformed.org/documents/Edwards/j_edwards_resolutions.html

I think he got a bit carried away, like he did with most things. Like spiders. http://www.jonathanedwards.com/text/Spider.htm
But there has to be something about the new year, the fresh slate, that gives up hope that this year will be the one. The one that is better-stronger-faster and helps us jump higher and run swifter. Like looking ahead to spring even though there are two months left of winter gray.

I have learned a few things about resolutions. They're just goals with a holiday decoration. Here are my tips for keeping New Year's Resolutions.

1. Never make them on New Year's Eve. In front of a lot of people. After the champagne.

2. Have an end point. 12 weeks is a much better time period than a full year. You can do anything for 12 weeks. Really, ask anyone who's ever done a 12 step program.

3. Tell a few people about them, to keep yourself honest. If they fall over laughing, then you might want to rethink your plans.

4. Some things are best not resolved. Especially if they involve other people. Only make resolutions where you can control the outcome. (Note to self, forcing children to make beds daily is not a new year's resolution. It is a pipe dream.)

Notice, there is nothing there that says you should blog your resolutions out into the universe. Or shouldn't. The only one that I will put out here is that I have set myself some artificial deadlines. I will blog here on Sunday's and Tuesdays. If Blogspot will cooperate. That's not always a given lately. And then I'll update the reading blog as needed. I have a lot of reading to do to get seventy five this year, so off I go. See you next year.

Warning...political rant....

The date on this post should be yesterday. I wrote it and blogger swallowed it whole. Oh well.

Ben Franklin once said, They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

You can go ahead and skip this if you're not in the mood for politics. I'm not really, but I need to get this out of my system, so I don't bore my family and friends with it all holiday. Excuse me, Christmas. There was a letter to the editor in our local paper today, someone blamed the whole flak about the War On Christmas on some folks trying to get the attention off of other topics, like indicted Congressional Leaders, Thirty Thousand jobs gone at GM and the fact that Iraq and Afganistan were staring to have better infrastructure than New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Amen. But I digress...

Point the first....America is not safe. No place is safe, not since we broke the lease in Eden, if you read Genesis. Hundreds of years ago, immigrants came to the shores of North America, not because it was safe, but because it was free.There was death on the ships, there were less than welcoming Natives, there were unfriendly tourists from other countries. As well as imported criminals. Nope, not safe at all. If safety was the goal, people stayed put.

But now, we're obsessed with safety. A safety that never existed. If there is an accident, a militant mob forms with the expressed intent of "THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN." As if tragedy isn't a detriment enough, new laws, regulations and products come into being to insure safety.

Yesterday, one of the local letter to the editor contributors responded to the fury about the illegal spying. She said she had nothing to hide, they could spy on her all they wanted.

Um, darling, that's not the point.

The point is that democracies do not spy on their citizens. The point is that there is a consitutional set of checks and balances to make sure one branch of the government does not get more uppity than the others.

Our country's core value has changed. Core values, all the rage in board rooms and church leadership meeting. Companies and congregations ask "what is our core value, what is most important to us?" Now there is a spoken value, what people say out loud, and then there is the hidden core value, what really is important. So take a hypothetical church. The spoken core value is that following Jesus is primary. The hidden core value adds, as long as it isn't too weird. Don't rock the boat. Accept Jesus and be like us.

Once upon a time, when Ben Franklin was only dreaming of his electricity and printing press joining together and forming Blogdom, freedom was the core value. One man would not be in charge.

It's changed. Now safety is supreme. From "Let Freedom Ring" to "Let's build a wall to keep out the riff raff." You know. a wall worked so well for Berlin, we OUGHT to build one across the southern border. In fact, there are some pieces at the George HW Bush Library that could be used.

What makes me sad is that our military men and women are fighting for our "freedom." And it's being lost not on the deserts of Iraq, but in the halls of Congress and the airwaves of Foxnews.

Spam verification

Well, I added a couple new things to the ol' blog. I like the nifty quote at the top and yes, it does change every day! Too fun! Then, because of all the spam bots putting weird comments on my blog, I had to turn on the word verification.

Another site I like to visit, Query Letters I love, uses word verification and the folks leaving comments all make up a fun definition for their word verification word. So, if you want to leave a comment, go ahead and test your creativity. I dare you.

Life Motto

I actually wrote this a few weeks ago, but the ol' blogger system was too bogged down to post it.

My main character, Jane, found her new life motto while shopping in the Lack's furniture store. Huge red banners hung from the rafters. "No interest until 2007," they proclaimed to anyone who would look up at then. She looked at them carefully then approached one of the sales staff.

"Would you sell me a banner?"
"They're adverstising signs, what do you need them for?"
"I only need one. For my mother. I want to hang it in my kitchen and whenever my mother comes over and starts to talk about fixing me up, I'll be able to point to it to explain my current personal policy about dating. No Interest 'til 2007."

It's no longer November....

And that means NaNoWriMo is over and life will assume some normal routine that doesn't depend on writing four thousand words a day to "Catch up." Finished the thing, with about sixty five thousand words when all was said and done. Does it need work? You betcha. Lots. But not until January.

But for your reading pleasure, here's a short exerpt:

“Can you tell me how much longer the turkey has until it’s done?” Maura sighed, a long, loud, self-pitying sigh. “Your father used to cook the turkey. I never did learn how.”

“Well, I usually just read the directions and I do allright,” Jane said as she walked over to the oven and took the orange and brown turkey-shaped oven mitts off the counter. She slipped them on her hand and saw Caleb coming into the kitchen. “Gobble gobble,” she said, using the mitts as puppets. Caleb laughed.

“You go on back to the kids room, Caleb. There’s hot stuff in here and I wouldn’t want to you get hurt.” Maura warned.

“I want the toy-key puppet,” Caleb said. He held out his arms to Jane.

“The turkeys have to work right now. They can come to the playroom and visit when they get home from work.” Jane smiled as she said it.

“You can’t give those to him to play with. They’re oven mitts. We’ll need them after dinner for the pies.” Maura shook her head, clearly exasperated. “When you’re a mother you’ll understand these things.”

“Funny, nothing I learned in college biology classes told me that pregnancy causes the control freak hormone to gush out of control,” Jane muttered under her breath. “They’re just oven mitts, Mom, he can’t hurt them. Even if he did, we got them at Wal-mart. You could get an exact duplicate tomorrow for half price.”

“I shouldn’t have to pay any price, since I already have them here.”

Clint said nothing during this entire exchange. He was programming phone numbers into his new cell phone and whistling whenever the voices around him grew louder.

Jane pulled the turkey out of the oven and uncovered it. She stabbed it in the thight with the meat thermometer and waited for the red needle to creep up to the internal temperature. Still lacking a hundred degrees. She recovered the pan and shoved the whole rack back into the oven, then adjusted the temperature slightly higher.

“Your father always cooked the turkey at 300. Turn it back down,” Maura ordered.
Jane looked at Lisa for help. “Dad also started cooking at five am. We started at ten. Unless I turn this thing up a bit, we’ll have a few more days until dinner.”

“It’ll be fine, Mom,” Lisa said. “The kids and Clint are getting hungry.”

“Would you rather we hurry it up, Clint?” Maura asked.

Clint’s eyes went to his wife’s face, then back to Maura. “Yes, ma’am. I’m starving. Lisa wouldn’t let any of us eat anything all day, said we’d spoil our appetitites.”

Lisa smiled her approval.

Maura hurried over the the golden yellow side by side refrigerator. “Here,” she said as she opened the right hand door and pulled out an enormous tray. “I made this to snack on while we waited.”

Snack on? Jane thought, Three families could feast on this alone. There were heaping mounds of brocoli, cauliflower, black olives, green olives, midget dill gherkins and sweet midget gherkins. A bowl of ranch dressing sat in the center. Each section was separated from the others by stalks of celery and sticks of carrot. Jane picked up a carrot and dipped it into the dressing.

“Jane, that’s not fat-free dressing.” Maura said. Her left eyebrow arched slightly.
“I know, I don’t eat fat-free,” Jane said. She put the carrot in her mouth and let the creamy sour cream based dip melt on her tongue.

“I’m just saying maybe you should think about it. You had a little pouch on your tummy the last time you wore those black slacks. You’re not some twenty year old kid anymore. You need to start watching.” Maura took an olive an popped it into her mouth.

There was something wrong about being lectured about diet by someone with diabetes who has the shape of an Idaho baking potato. Raw, not after it’s been turned into French Fries, or as Maura now called them, Freedom Fries. Her postition as the Social Secretary for the Republican Women’s group made it important that she stood strong on important issues. Like what to call fast food. Normally, Jane would let it roll off her back more, then later, she’d have a beer with her dad and they would compare all the snappy comebacks they would have said if they weren’t so diplomatic. Without Dad around to release the pressure valve later, Jane was starting to wonder what would happen if some of her thoughts actually leaked out of her head. For sure, she would be demoted from the grownup table in the dining room to the children’s table in the kitchen. The problem was, Jane was starting to think it would be a good thing.

“So, Jane,” Clint said, “How are things in dodge ball land?”

“Silly, Clint, she can’t teach dodge ball anymore. Too violent.” Lisa said, rubbing Clint’s balding head.

“I could, if I found away to connect it to the standardized tests. I think dodge ball and No Child Left Behind are made for each other, myself.” Jane said.

“Hey, we finally agree on something political! Who’d guessed?” Clint smiled.

“You’re right. Both are barbaric, based on old ways of thinking.”

“Whoa, that’s not what I meant...” Clint stammered.

“I think we should leave politics and religion out of Thankgiving,” Maura said.
“Neither one belongs on a family holiday.”

Lisa and Jane looked at each other. Every now and then, Lisa showed signs of seeing the insanity that emitted from Maura’s mouth. Lisa grinned. “Ok, no God and country will be mentioned any more today. What about grace?”

“Who’s Grace?” Maura asked. “I can put out another place.”

Crafty Peaches

I don't know what scares me more. The fact that some spammer or his/her spambot has christened me "Crafty Peaches" or that I'm actually thinking of adopting the name as a user id for my spam email addresses. You known, the free email addresses you set up so you can go to some website and sign up for the newsletter and keep the surveys and "you won!" emails from getting mixed up with your real emails. Like the ones from Flylady and Sitemeter. I've been known to use character names, family names, dog names, but talented fruits? This is an area I have somehow missed. Crafty Peaches says so much more than Tranquil Waters (or was it Nyquil Waters?) Like fuzzy on the outside, then sweet, then poison at the core??

All I can say is that Crafty Peaches sure is popular! I get at least a dozen emails each day, all wanting Crafty Peaches' opinion on politics, softdrinks and televisons shows. And, Crafty Peaches is offered many discount pharmaceuticals. Some obviously for personal use and some to share with friends. And Crafty Peaches is invited to visit all kinds of websites. I wonder if Artsy White Grapes is ever invited.

Perhaps I can come up with a talented fruit id generator for my friends. There's Conniving Pears. Radical Oranges. Durable Apples. Yeah, that's a great userid. I can see the spam now...Hey, Durable Apples! Your Opinion Counts!

I guess it's better than Spoilt Persimmons.

A journey starts with the first step...

And a novel starts with the first sentence. I'll playing with it, but here is the beginning thus far...

Rose Franklin found out she was conceived out of wedlock in the Walmart parking lot. Not that the actual conception happened there, but for some reason, her mother decided to reveal Rose’s history at the Navasota Walmart, next to a large dirty Ford F-150 that smelled like it had been hauling manure that morning. For a moment, Rose imagined her mother’s shopping list:
Walmart:
Laundry detergent
Paper turkey centerpiece and matching napkins
Tell first born daughter she’s a bastard
anti-perspirant
hemorroid cream
trash bags

“Gee, your dad and I got drunk, and three months later, I realized I was carrying you,” her mother blurted out, as if she were asking what aisle the soap was on. “I hope they’re not out of those turkeys. Alice had one at her house last year and it looked so cute on her table.”

Rose shook her head. Only her mother would think a paper turkey would be the perfect classy Thanksgiving centerpiece. After all, the woman hated fresh flowers. The F-150’s horn alerted her that it’s driver was ready to go get more manure and if she didn’t get out of the way, her life would end, fittingly, in the Walmart parking lot. Her mother was already in the doorway of the store, probably miffed that the retired shop teacher that welcomed shoppers wasn’t quite quick enough with the buggy. She had no idea that telling your daughter she was the product of a night of binge drinking wasn’t something you did while walking through a parking lot. It had to be difficult to be that inappropriate, yet at the same time, but hyper-concerned about what everyone thought of you. It was the dichotomy that defined Maura Kean’s life. And therefore, Rose’s as well.

I wish I said this first...

"A good story often reads so easily that civilians seem to think that
the darn things write themselves. Whenever I leave the house, I make
sure that one of my novels is hard at work. I expect five pages by the
time I get back."

- David Morrell


I mean, don't you.

I feel like I almost have a real blog. An bona fide spammer made a comment. I'm on my way now!!

Through Painted Deserts and Plains.

A few years ago, like almost 20, I spent my summers working in the kitchen at a well know youth ministy's Colorado Ranch. It was at the time, a perfect life. I worked in the summers and avoided the scorching Texas heat. My regular job was only budgeted for nine months a year, except I could pay a little extra for health insurance for the other three month. So, I had insurance, no expenses, use of a vehicle and a home nestled in the valley of the San Isabel National Forrest. Doesn't get much better.

I thought about this today when I started reading Through Painted Deserts : Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road by Donald Miller. I love it and hate it right now. I love it because Miller notices everyting, from the traffic in Houston at 2am to the different species of trees on Interstate 45 from Houston to Dallas and how they hide everything at night. I hate it because it is a testament to my stupid fears.

The camp photographer Deb and I, spent our off days traveling Colorado, back roads and old mining towns. She'd snap rolls and rolls of film, I'd scribble really bad poetry into old lab notebooks. I did that back then, write really bad poetry. I was a lousy poet, because I didn't like to read poetry. If you don't like reading it, you don't need to be writing it. But I wasn't smart enough to know that back then. I wrote about her photographs, mourning that the black and white prints we developed in the camp darkroom didn't capture the differences in the green of the trees and the green of the grasses. They couldn't give the sound, the whisper, of the July wind in the Aspens.

After our adventures, we'd take the prints and the notebooks of bad poems and sit in laundry room, waiting for the industrial washers to finish our week's worth of dirty shorts and wool socks and plot the next adventure. It didn't take to long to realize that we would soon run out of places within a couple hours of the camp, and we never could get two consecutive days off. So we started devising Plan B. A summer of cruising. A cross country trip in her Subaru. We'd start in California, where she lived the rest of the year, and end up in New Jersey, at my grandparents. We'd take pictures, write stories of the people and places in the pictures.

We never went. Wasn't money, we could've worked it out. For me, it was fear. Don't know what I was afraid of, maybe the unknown. But it kept me from what could have been the best summer. But those silly voices, saying it was a stupid plan, it was irresponsible *(if you cna't be irresponsible when you're 23 and single, when can you be?) It was scary. I don't know if Deb ever went. I hope she did.

And now I read this stupid book and wonder what could have been.

Adjectives that will never be used to describe my books

....And I think I'll be okay with that.

I got my new catalog from Quality Paperback Book club today. The sheer number of adjectives and adverbs used to promote books is mindboggling. I'm thinking of suggesting a rationing program. Conserve adjectives and adverbs, save some for future generations.

The gushing reviews are so "stunning, dazzling, and powerful" that I want to order each and every "astonishing" new novel by every "beloved" and "best-selling" author. I have found the ads to be "[S]trangely affecting." On one page, I can order a "feat of imaginative sympathy and technique..." because the author "delivers images of odd beauty and a mounting existential distress that hangs around long after." Mounting existential distress that hangs around long after? Sounds like the last time I tried to cook Thai food from scratch.

These authors work with a "Dickensian vocabulary and an Atwood-like ability to meld literature with science fiction." The novels themselves have "deceptive simplicity,...extraordinary emotional depth and resonance." They are "finely wrought and shimmering with intelligence."

But wait. I could also have books that are "painfully funny and brilliantly executed." "Utterly original." "A dazzling epic."

Do writers sit down and say, "I think today I'll write a novel that's 'buoyant and beautiful'?" Or "daring and unforgettable?" How about "witty, wise and heartbreaking?" "Brilliantly absurd?" "delightfully improbable?" Or, "Enchanting...beautifully crafted and as dazzingly imaginative as it is dizzyingly romantic."

I think the world would be a better place if someone, preferably someone rich and anonymous, bought every book reviewer a copy of Strunk's Elements of Style. There are adverbs and adjectives being ABUSED out there, people! It is up to those who love words to rescue them and redeem then to infrequent usage so that they may regain the power and the glory that is in excellent descriptive writing. Please, send a book reviewer a verb. You'll be glad you did.

Had the subtitle all wrong...

It's not "a bag lady's tale", it's the "Hand-bag Lady's tale". Kinda my tribute to Margaret Atwood on the way. I wonder what Ms. Atwood would do with my material. I'm thinking my main character needs lots of lunatics in her life, so she might be a waitress. At an Applebee's kind of place. Managed by an Iranian, like my old pal Moshi. And his rich cousins, Khalid and Omar. So the insanity is balanced. Or she can have a computer support job. On the phone, so we don't have too many customers to describe.Something that keeps the number of main people in the single digits. After my last book, I need a set number of people to keep up with. A girl CAN have too many imaginary friends, doncha know.

Speaking of friends, some of my real life friends want to be "in" the book. Hmmm, what if I do and they don't like it? Or if I fictionalize them so much they don't recognize themselves? I have nightmares of Truman Capote, who used all his friends conversations in his stories. The poor society ladies read all about their own lives in the New Yorker.

I know, I can have the main character, still unnamed, whining about listening to her walking buddies, J,A & C, who spend ENTIRELY too much time complaining about how hard it is to find size four jeans in this town. Or maybe size 2? Then I can jet them out to Aruba for the rest of the book. So they'll be there and still be my friends when it's over.

A Purse Driven Life - A Bag Lady's Tale

I think that's looking like the title of my NaNoWriMo novel. Of course that could change, but I'm liking the idea now. My first idea was something I've already worked on a bit, like a couple of pages of really bad writing. Really bad, the main character bored even me. If I don't want to spend time with a character, I doubt a reader would. So, I thought I would start over on the chemical plant thriller. But since NaNoWriMo should really be brand spanking new really bad fiction, I decided to try this new idea.

I know, a Christian Writer had an advice book by just about the same title.The Purse-driven Life: It Really Is All About Me by Anita Renfroe. I haven't read it, but I did read a few pages on Amazon. It looked fairly interesting and I'm sure Anita is a wise and witty woman. But it is nonfiction, and since A) I haven't seen it on the best seller list anywhere, and B) Titles aren't copyrighted, I think I'll snag the title. Because it so fits my idea. As much as I'd like to use her subtitle, I'll not steal that too. Gotta have some originality.

But, the story:

A woman dies and her daughter and niece find over fifty purses in her closet. Her life is then told in relation to some of the purses that the women remember the older woman owning. Not a spiritual growth book in any way, more like catharsis. But not really, because my book will be FICTION and certainly NOT based on any mothers I may have known in ANY way. So don't get any ideas, it's NOT a memoir. And if you accuse me of writing about actual events, I will put you in the book and my friend, it won't be pretty.

I still need to do some important research. I only own one purse. Off to the mall!

Everything I learned about writing a novel, I learned from running marathons.

Everything I learned about writing a novel, I learned from running marathons.

If you go out too fast, you’ll be exhausted at the end. Others around you may go out too fast. Ignore them.

Sometimes, you have to go at it alone. There may not be anyone on the roadside cheering you on.

You can only worry about the step you are taking right now. You can’t run mile 14 while you are running mile 2.

Neither can you write your acceptance speech for the Booker Award if you haven’t finished the first draft.

You can’t put forth effort without taking in nourishment. Food for the body, food for the soul and information for the mind. Read, reflect and research.

It gets tiring and even a bit boring in the middle. Get through it anyway.

There are people who are faster than you.

There are people who look better that you.

But no one else can run your race, and no one else can write your work.

It’s all about endurance. And that’s something you can build, it’s a skill.

There is no feeling in the world like finishing.

It's T minus One Month

It's almost October. Which means I need to finish the book I'm currently working on by October 15. Why? So I have two weeks off to plan, plot and, rest (I know, it doesn't start with pl- but this is a blog, not a Sunday Sermon) for National Novel Writing Month.

I'm most likely going to be a municipal liaison this year, so at least by the end of the month, I should be able to spell liaison correctly on the first try most of the time. But I figure, if I can coach over two hundred college students to run twenty six miles, I can cheer lead while highly motivatied, caffeinated people write really bad novels. Not only that, but I can write a really bad novel as well! It's much more fun to write really bad novels with friends.

So if you're game, check out NaNoWriMo and come on out and play with us!

PS I finally, after all this time, noticed that I've mispelled procrastinating in the header of my blog. UGH! That is why I need an editor of my very own.