No Rest For The Wicked(and you may get tired reading this post)

This is what Heather Kelly has done for me:

Approximately 1000 words every morning. (We have a virtual meeting in the AM.)(Is is virtual or is it real? It is real but it is not actually in person. But it is very early so you never know.) My fantasy about writing that early was that I would roll out of bed and suddenly have my dreams at my fingertips and I would tap into some deep secret well of my imagination. In reality I just write a bunch of musing gobblity goop, which has included a couple really good helpful necessary scenes, but it seems that those morning words do provide some kind of alchemy and the next morning a few more ideas come of it, full scenes and problems solved, more clarity.

This picture on my living room wall. Not pretty, I know, but look it! the whole first half of my book is right there on my wall and it was inspired by her lovely VISUAL arrangement on her carpeting. My picture is about the size of me, drawn on a large piece pf tissue paper. The tissue paper is affectionately called bumwad. My sister is in Landscape Architecture school and apparently knows how you use bumwad. She has informed me I could add another layer of bumwad on top of this bumwad drawing and illustrate more of the novel's grand design(the second half of the book perhaps, or dissect a scene?) and as Anita’s son knows and I now know, it is seriously fun to draw on your wall with marker (Anita, you are an inspiration).

Heather is also partly responsible for this outline of the first half of my novel. You can’t see it well in this picture of my desk top. Sorry about that. But that is Scrivener right there with the table of contents on the left side and the first half of my novel in its new outline form in the middle, each chapter has its own title complete with synopsis and what not. On the left, Scrivener allows you to make notes, assign keywords, fun stuff like that. Things that are either very helpful or time consuming. Like blogging. You understand.

Finally, she gave me this award. It is lovely for her to think of me and I’m honored to be among the ranks of those near and dear who have received it of late. Heather herself, PMM, TEW, the great Jonathan Arntson. Their various posts have been models for me. Not only in response to this award (they all did it graciously and with thoughtfulness) but also in their everyday posting. I don’t know how I will use this award. But in her kindness, Heather said I should do with it what I will, and as of yet I have no will.

More on that later.



As for the revision: A little bit, by little bit I am letting myself near the scary stuff. Hopefully it will be a better book because of it. For sure it will be a truer book, if you know what I mean. Have you had those times in your writing where you found you had to face what you had been resisting? All of a sudden a character opened up and you saw something deeper and more pungent about them.

 I can’t help it. I have to go back to onions again.

If you saute an onion well, it can make anything taste good. Sauteed lettuce, not so much. But what about this, you saute up an onion and serve it to a bearded guy. That is when life is real good. Um, that is what my life is like about 100 percent of the time. Lots of onions, sauteed by me (mostly added to other things unless I am caramelizing them and then we eat them on pizza, or in these little corn flower pockets called arrepas). I saute onions just about everyday and serve them up to hubby (and my children, who most days are unimpressed, which keeps me humble). But cooking is easy and writing is hard. Either way, both requires me to apply some fat, some heat, some time. I have to watch onions/words closely to make sure they don’t get too burned. Most people stop before they are done. Cook it a long time, it will be delicious. This is what I know.

As Always (don’t even get me started on cabbage),
Tina