Photo of the Week--12/7/09

No pigeons in this photo ... because they are definitely not native to Finnish Lapland. However, there were plenty of reindeer on this trip, which we took a couple weeks before Christmas 1999. It was actually only a couple days before the winter solstice, and at a latitude above 68°N (and yes, that is above the Arctic Cirlce) it was dark for most of the day. This photo was taken not long after lunch, when it was very dusky out. It was a very atmospheric trip—lots of snow hanging on evergreen branches, in addition to the crepuscular light—topped off with a visit to Santa's cabin in the snow. I can't imagine why Boy was so hesitant to say hello to this reindeer; it looks so friendly, doesn't it? More awesome, in his mind, was the ambulance that took his mom away after a tobogganing accident, and the cart with the flashing light we got to ride through the airport. Ten years later, and I'm still terrified to go near a sled.

Final Lessons from NaNoWriMo

As you can see from the little icon at the top left of my blog, I am a winner! By writing over 50,000 words during the month of November, I officially "won" the National Novel Writing Month challenge. What was my prize, besides a feeling of accomplishment and a nifty certificate I have to print out myself? A feeling of accomplishment, a nifty certificate, and a load of chores and errands to catch up with. Oh, and some interesting lessons I've learned about writing. Here are some of them:

1. Any writing is better than nothing. I came back from chaperoning marching band nationals a little bit behind my target average of 1667 words a day, and the following week got really behind while I was catching up on work, craft fair signs, and other chores. Some days I only got in about 400 words, hastily typed at night while I was watching the local news, but that was better than nothing. It kept my mind in the story and my fingers in practice. Even though it was discouraging seeing my progress bar fall behind the target bar, it was still a little bit of progress.
2. You have to snatch your writing moments when you can. Sometimes it's while the rest of the family is watching TV. Sometimes it's early in the morning, after Boy is off to school but before I have class. Sometimes it's while everyone else in the family is lined up for Thanksgiving dinner (and the line is so long, you might as well keep writing). Steal those moments when you can, because any writing is better than nothing.
3. It is possible to write 5000 words (or more) in a day. By the time I got to the last four days of NaNoWriMo, I still had one-fifth of the novel to go. For you math-challenged folks, that's 10,000 words, meaning I needed 2500 words each of the last four days. And actually, since I wasn't quite 80% through the story, I actually ended up writing about 12000 words those last four days, including about 5000 on Sunday the 29th. I will admit that I might not have done it without brainstorming or outlining beforehand, but I still did it.
4. Writing is fun! It seems silly to have to say this, because if I didn't think it was fun (even the business articles) I wouldn't be doing it. But even with the pressure to find time and produce word count, I was having a lot of fun. Even though there were many places I was wincing at all the crutch words (which still count, by the way!) I was using, there were a few times I was really pleased by a certain turn of phrase I had used. And by the time I got to the end of the novel, when my button-downed protagonist finally expressed her feelings to her controlling mom and had a possibility of rekindling a romance, I was genuinely excited. I got the same emotional reaction and feeling of discovery I get when I'm reading a book and I get to those big moments—and yet I was writing it. It doesn't get much more fun than that.
5. You can find inspiration in all sorts of weird places. I had a lot of fun with my encyclopedia format, and made several trips to the dictionary and Google every day to find fun facts to include in the text. Some of them I couldn't have made up if I'd tried. I was brainstorming entries for "R" and thought I needed to get back to the animal shelter portion of the story, so I put in "Rabbit." I googled "rabbit weird facts" and discovered that you can hypnotize rabbits by putting them on their back and stroking them. (Again, couldn't have made it up if I'd tried.) More interesting, though, is how I've felt inspired by my main character. I made her take a lot of chances and change her life, in ways I hadn't planned when I started writing. And she has inspired me, in turn, to try something new. I don't want to get into a lot of detail, in case I crash and burn and give up the first week, but it involves a certain exercise I hate to do. If the inspiration sticks, I'll definitely write more about it.

So overall, I'd say NaNoWriMo was a valuable experience and I got a lot out of it. Will I do it again next year? It's going to depend on what my schedule looks like, but right now I would say no. I got the kick-start I needed to get back into writing fiction, and hopefully I won't need it again 11 months from now. Instead, I may have to join NaNoRevisMo (National Novel Revising Month) to work on structure and crutch words and all those other things I ignored while churning out the words. I'm sure I'll find just as many lessons in that!

Photo of the Week--11/30/09

... aaaand the latest in our series, "Boy chases the pigeons of Europe," features a really BIG pigeon. Actually, it's a chicken. We took a short weekend trip (made shorter by the cancellation of our flight on Friday night, making the prop-plane flight the next morning a little nerve-inducing) to Jersey, one of the Channel Islands between England and France. It's a very interesting place, as it has a lot of French influences (it's closer physically to the mainland) but a very British culture and history. It was actually occupied by the Germans during WWII, and it was interesting to see the traces left by that part of history.

Jersey is a pretty small island, though, so we had plenty of time to explore more pastoral places. This working farm attraction had plenty to observe in the fall harvest season (including a really big horse-drawn cider press), and Boy was fascinated with the chickens. Because they were big enough to fight back, we didn't let him chase them, so we had a peaceful scene to photograph this time.

The Quilt Files, Episode 16

Grandma edition!

It's almost Thanksgiving, which of course makes me think of family and family gatherings and PIE! (Sorry, no pie with these quilts, but I'm already salivating at the thought of pie right now and I get distracted easily.) In addition to getting ready for Thanksgiving, I'm trying to collect photos from all my cousins of the quilts my grandmother has made for her 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. We were talking about quilting a while back, and I mentioned I had finished a quilt and this time I remembered to take a photo of it before mailing it off. She sighed and said she'd wished to do that with all her quilts, but it was too late to bother with it now. I thought, ooo! Christmas idea, and have been steadily collecting photos from my cousins ... not all of them, I'll have some arm-twisting to do this weekend, but maybe I'll have the album ready for Christmas if not Thanksgiving. With all the thoughts of family and Grandma and quilting, I thought that this month I would feature the two quilts Grandma made for me and Boy.

This quilt, the Star Spin design, wasn't actually made for me. When TSU and I got married in the summer of 1987, Grandma hadn't taken up quilting yet. She spent a lot of her years after retiring practicing oil painting (I have some nice ones hanging up in my workroom), and when she got tired of that she decided to try quilting. Grandma started quilting around 1988 or 1989, and soon afterward my cousins started getting married (3 in 1990 alone) and Grandma started making quilts for wedding gifts. (We did get a quilt from Grandma and Grandpa for our wedding, but it was made by a church guild and has not lasted as long as our marriage; it's seriously frayed. And it's pink.) She eventually realized that all her grandchildren except me had a quilt from Grandma, so she told me I could have this one when she was done with it. After my grandfather passed in 2001, Grandma moved out of her house into assisted living, and this quilt moved into my house, where it keeps us warm all winter long.

After she finished making quilts for all her 11 grandchildren, Grandma could have taken a well-deserved rest. But the next generation started making an appearance, beginning with Boy in early 1994, so Grandma went back to the fabric store and started over. She's now got 11 great-grandchildren, and a grand total of 22 quilts. This is Boy's Twin Star Quilt, which for now just hangs on a quilt display rack, since it's a queen-size and too big for his bed. You can probably tell that by now Grandma had discovered the fun of using cotton batiks for the fabrics, and she found some really lovely ones for this quilt. I'm sure when he finally gets to the age where he has his own house, he'll really appreciate this lovely remembrance of his Great-Grandma. She's still quilting at age 93; after all, you never know when another great-grandchild might arrive!

Photo of the Week--11/23/09

No fair! How come I have no trouble posting embarrassing pictures of Boy, but I never make myself the target of my photo posts? Well, the main reason is that I'm the family photographer. I'm the one who drags the camera and batteries and film (now flash cards) to all our destinations. I'm the one who says, "let's climb a little higher" so I can get a really great photo. I only end up in the picture when TSU says, "Hey, why don't I take one with you in it." At which point I hand over the camera, bemoan the state of my hair, and smile like a fool.

So here's a photo from a trip we took to Lucerne, Switzerland in fall 1999. This particular shot was taken atop Mt. Pilatus, and those are the Alps you see in the background. Luckily we didn't have to climb the mountain to get the shot; we took a steam train across the lake, a funicular railway to the top (worth the trip in itself for Boy, who was mad about trains at the time), and a cable car back to the city. Although it was cloudy, it was still extremely beautiful. Unlike my hair. (Sigh.)

I'm with the band ... um, where'd they go?

I'm pretty much recovered now from my long weekend chaperoning the marching band at Nationals Competition. It was exhausting, but amazing to see how hard the kids worked. They had a great run in prelims, getting one of their best scores of the season and one of the top ten of 91 bands at prelims. They were pretty tired for their semi-final run Saturday morning, though, and barely missed out on making Finals. Still, 13th in the country is pretty damn good, especially when some of the competition has half again as many musicians in their band. And no one had as cool a show as PCMB this year: watch the video below, and the last 60 seconds will have you shaking your head and wondering, how in the world did they do that? (Click the square box in the lower right to see it full screen.)

More lessons from NaNoWriMo

As you can see by the progress bar at the top of the page, I've officially reached the halfway point in my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) goal of writing a 50,000 word novel. I've learned a few more things about writing during these first couple of weeks:

1. It really helps to have some quite "thinking" time before you get started writing. I've tried starting each day by taking my pretty journal book and making notes before I get started. It gets me set up for what I want to write, and gets me in the mood as well. It also invariably attracts the cat, since I sit in the front room which rarely gets used otherwise.
2. It is possible to write 2000 words a day and also work on assignments. It's a lot easier when the assignments are copyediting (ie fact-checking and review) instead of original writing, because it's two different types of thinking and it's a relief when I give up on the business articles and get back to my novel.
3. I'm loving my whole "encyclopedia article" structure, because I just make my list of words and write. Not having to think about plot (except during early morning thinking time) sure makes the writing a lot easier.
4. One can fit in writing while one is sitting outside watching kids practice the marching band show, or inside waiting for them to finally get ready for bed to turn lights out. It's not easy, but it is possible. One must avoid skipping ahead, though; although this is usually a great technique to avoid writer's block, if one is extremely busy one tends to forget to go back and fill in the holes.
5. One cannot fit in writing when one is sleep deprived. Actually, you might manage to fit it in, but you'll just end up staring at the screen as the cursor blinks hypnotically and your nose ends up typing "hjkjhkjhjkhjkhjkghjkhjkjhkh" when your head hits the keyboard.

I've gotten a bit behind my target of 2K a Day, but I'm close to the average of 1667 words a day, and hope to get further ahead as we get to the end of the month. I'm almost done with the "M" section (letter 13 of 26), but I figure "O" and "Q" will only be half-sections, so I'm still making progress. We'll see if I last with Thanksgiving coming up; I hear there are already pies to be eaten.