Tomorrow is a good day for a new start

Tomorrow is NaNoWriMo. (That's National Novel Writing Month, if you don't happen to already know)

I’m particularly excited about it this year.

I’ve landed in Saudi, and I’m finally starting to feel settled. The household has been set up and is starting to flow the way that it should. Brandon’s MBA is done and is no longer swallowing our lives whole like it has for the past two years. In the next week, I’ll be arranging a housekeeper to come in twice a week and do everything for me from scrubbing toilets to washing and folding all of my laundry.

But the very most exciting thing? The boys start school tomorrow.

For the first time in eight years, I will have 7 ½ hours a day to myself without interruption, five days a week.

I will be able to go exercise without arranging a babysitter. I will be able to leave my house without having to hurry anybody up into their shoes or their coat. I will be able to play my guitar without having to fight off little hands. I will be able to make salad for lunch and not hear a single whining complaint from anybody. 

I will be able to think in a straight line, and then go on, and think some more.

I love my kids, but they are a handful. And that’s putting it mildly. They are good boys but socially, they are both extroverts. My oldest especially. He has absolutely no idea what to do with himself in an empty room alone, except to find somebody to be with. It’s painful to him to not spend the day at another person’s side constantly, constantly interacting.

I, however, am quite the opposite of that. I relish solitude. I long for quiet hours and peaceful, silent, unoccupied space. I’ve always been that way.

When I was in elementary school, I used to climb onto the garage roof just to get away from the constant flow and noise of people in my house. I was the second oldest of six children. Five of us were born in five years, one after the other, after the other. There was always a lot of flow and noise. I used to climb on the roof and tell myself stories for hours. It was the ultimate escape up there, with nothing but the clouds and the silence to keep me company.

Tomorrow, I’m going to miss my kids. My little one loves crafts and will sit and color with me all day long. My oldest is funny and has discovered that he’s nearly big enough to wrestle me to the ground. We wrestle a lot.

But having them both in full day school is going to be like getting my garage roof back. I’m going to have hours to myself again to stare at the clouds and dream of hero’s and battles and far off lands, and I’ll have all the time in the world to get it all onto paper. 

I’ve got a Writers of the Future win beneath my belt. I’ve got my kids off to school. I’ve got a housekeeper doing my laundry.

At this point, if I don’t start writing, there aren’t a whole lot of excuses left to hide behind.

Tomorrow I am going to start writing. I’m going to produce novels and short stories, and I’m going to see what I can sell, and learn from what I can’t.

Tomorrow is the day that my career starts.

12 Things I learned while snorkeling in the Red Sea

I’ve been debating for a while now, how best to use my blog. My life is fairly unstable at the moment. We’ve moved to the other side of the planet, and my boys still aren't registered in school. So I have two big fiery balls of energy racing, bored through my only writing space for about 12 hours a day. This, while I also attempt to relearn to cook with a range of ingredients I’ve never heard of before. It’s been a long process to figure out what I can find and what has to be made from scratch and what can be learned and what has to be lived without. I also have to learn at least enough of a new language to be able to maneuver my new city. And set up a household, not being able to find half of what I’m used to living with. And all this after probably the most exhausting six-month period of my married life. I feel as though I’m relearning how to live. It’s a good thing I get the occasional adventure on the weekends.

So I haven’t been writing all that much in the past several months, which means that I haven’t felt like I had that much to write about here either. But I have been learning, and note-taking and storing away for later.

I remembered this weekend that the whole reason I agreed to come here was to learn and to write. So that’s what this blog is going to be. It’s going to be a place for sharing the things that I am learning.
With that in mind, here is a list of things that I learned while snorkeling in the Red Sea. Some of these will end up in stories someday. Some of these will not. All of it has been incredible to experience.

1.    The Djinn – you may know them better by the name of Genie.

We had a wonderful Saudi host named Zuhair, who was more than happy to talk to me about legends, stories, belief, and superstitions.

According to Muslim belief, each time a person is born, their very own Djinn is also born. It's your own personal Djinn. Unlike humans, which are temporary, djinn live forever. So the world is positively filled with them. But while you are alive, the two of you are connected. That feeling you get when you suddenly shiver with fear, and you don’t know why? Your Djinn has seen something that you have not, and you can sense it through them. They also are the conduit of bad dreams and dark thoughts. But they are not necessarily evil. They, like humans, are good, bad or neutral. But they do tend to be tricksters.

A person may be born into a certain religion, but your Djinn does not necessarily share your same beliefs. They may have been born Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or any other religion. Mohamed is famous for having converted his Djinn to Islam. Zuhair tells me that it’s a story that’s written in the Koran. It was one of the miracles that Mohamed performed as a prophet. Not having read the Koran, I’m going to take his word for it.

2.    It turns out I’m not afraid to swim in water that I can see through, even deep water.
I’ve had a lifelong fear of deep water, so I was nervous about this whole snorkeling thing. I’ve even had swimming pools freak me out if I couldn’t touch the bottom. But the waters of the Red Sea are extremely salty, so first off I was ridiculously buoyant. The boys didn’t need lifejackets. If they got tired, they just lay back and rested. They couldn’t sink if they tried. And they did try.

But I was still pretty nervous getting in. We started in an area about 3 meters deep. It wasn’t that deep really, but there are sharks in the Red Sea, and I couldn’t touch the bottom. I started hyperventilating the moment Kaalam shoved me off the side of the boat and into the water. (Yeah, he’s that kid!)

Brandon saw me starting to panic and told me just to stick my face in, look around. I wasn’t convinced, but I obeyed, and the world that opened up was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The coral was brilliant red and purple and yellow, and there were schools of tiny, colorful fish everywhere. There are some sights in the world that are just too beautiful to be afraid of. I spent hours in the water and never wanted to go home. We’ll be starting scuba certification soon. I can’t wait!

3.    I desperately need a GoPro camera.

4.    Zuhair fished for most of the trip. He’s an avid fisherman and shared several fishing tips with us as well. I know nothing about fishing, so I have no way of dissecting truth from lore, but I love the thought process that surrounds it all.

Never expose caught fish to the moonlight. They will go bad immediately. If you go fishing at night, choose only the darkest nights. When the moon is shining the fish see it and swim deep to get away from the light, so you won’t catch anything. But if there is any moonlight in the sky, you have to cover the fish with a blanket or your catch won’t make it home.

He says his blanket has wrapped up his family and his fish, and it all smells the same. It’s the best blanket he’s ever owned.

Fish should always die out of the water, never in.

The Red Sea fish all look like something that belongs in an aquarium. But they’re yummy anyway.
 

5.    At 3 meters deep, a teapot looks an awful lot like a sea turtle until the boat comes to a stop and the waves settle down. But it still makes an amazing treasure for an 8-year-old boy.

6.    Flat fish are a result of the parting of the Red Sea.

There is a kind of flat fish, with both its eyes on the same side of its head. They were in the way when Moses parted the Red Sea and the weird, flat shape of them is the result.

7.    Kites will fly really well off a boat. Right up until they invert and end up in the water. Once wet, they will not fly.

8.    It’s possible to play with a whale shark.

The Red Sea has whale sharks. They’ll come up alongside your boat at night if they see the boat lights. Zuhair says the best way to get rid of them is to lay a plumb line weight on top of their head. They’ll swim down 30 meters to the end of the plumb line when the weight finally comes free. If you’re serious about catching fish, you should turn your lights off and let the whale shark bother some other ship. But if you’ve caught enough for the night, you can do it again and again, until the whale shark grows bored and swims away.

9.    There is an ancient way of rigging up your bait for deep sea fishing that lets you wedge the bait between 2 stones. This protects the bait until it gets to the depth you’re looking to fish and pulls the bait deep without the use of another weight. When it gets to the end of the line, you pull a trigger line, and the stones fall away. Then you can fish for the big fish. Zuhair still does this occasionally. He likes not having to haul the extra weight up along with the fish.

10.    Saudi has a dessert made out of shredded wheat that is to die for.

The shredded wheat is coated in honey and wound into the shape of a tiny little nest. Three shelled pistachios nuts are nestled into the center. Whatever else is in it, I need to learn to make it because it’s amazing!

11.    There are jungles in Saudi. Sadly, I’ll probably never get to see them. They’re in the mountains by the border of Yemen. As adventurous as I’d like to think I am, I’m not going near a war zone. This makes me sad.

12.    Mada'in saleh cannot be camped at.

The Nabateans, the ancient civilization that built the Treasury at Petra, built clear down into Saudi. There are great big structures carved directly into the stone. According to the stories, Mohamed traveled past the ruins with several of his followers. His followers wanted to stop for the night, but Mohamed told them no. The ruins were of a different time, belonging to a different people. Zuhair may have briefly inferred that the ruins were haunted, but I’m still working on fully understanding the accent.

Either way, to this day, the Saudi’s do not spend the night there. No surrounding city has ever been built.

Zuhair really likes us. He’s offered to drive us up, and tour guide the ruins for us. He’s also offered to take us out on the boat again. Once in the afternoon for more snorkeling, and once at night, to do some fishing.

This is going to be the most amazing experience of my life. I can’t wait to start getting it all into a story.

Nothing stands still for very long and big adventures are on their way.

Change is hard.

Especially when it’s constant.

I love adventure. I love exploring, and experiencing new things. But I’ve realized in the past few years that I haven’t had a real good adventure in quite a while. I used to go hiking. I used to drive out into the middle of nowhere just to see what I could find. Much to the dismay of my mother, I used to camp all by myself and stay up all night just to watch the stars.

Then I had children and it all stopped. My hobbies faded away and got replaced by ‘mommy-crafts’ and kid science. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t what I’d have picked for myself without the kids to consider. I haven’t played the guitar for years, even though I was starting to get pretty good at it. I haven’t been on a solitary hike in so long it’s been hard to remind myself that I can, when the kids are school.

Now that they are older, I find myself longing to find my adventure again.

My husband and I are in the middle of some very big choices right now, and it’s been hard. Fantastic opportunities are opening up that are going to allow me to find my adventure all over again. But they are so incredibly different. And they are both filled with so much adventure.

I wouldn’t have thought that having to pick just one of the two things you’ve wanted for as long as you could remember could be so difficult.

Either direction we go will be wonderful. My youngest will start full time school soon and I’ll have time to pick up the guitar again, do some yoga without turning into a jungle gym, make a salad for lunch without being whined at because it wasn’t a cheese tortilla. I’ll be able to actually sit down and read a book in silence, instead of squeezing in a chapter or two of audio book while I juggle playdates, laundry and quick trips to Walmart.

It’s all so close I can taste it. And it’s all going to happen soon.

Only it hasn’t happened yet. And I’m currently stuck in a holding pattern of ‘wait, it’s on its way’… Only I suck at waiting and everything in my life has slowed itself to a stand-still. Largely because our choices keep changing. New opportunities keep being introduced. Every time I think we get things settled and I know what to expect next, I get a text from my husband asking, “So what about this…?’’

And the choices keep getting better but I feel right now like my life is balanced on shifting sand and it’s all I can do to keep upright as my world slides around beneath me.

I just want to pick one, so I can be done. So I can know what’s coming next.

It’s the not knowing what’s coming next that’s driving me nuts.

Only I keep saying that I want my adventure back, and change is the only way it’s going to happen.

But man, change is really, really hard.

I am not a feminist. But I still hated that shirt.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the “Wise Reader”. Years ago, I was able to attend Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. It was a fantastic opportunity and I think that I might have learned more in the one week about writing than I had in all two years of my English degree smooshed together. It was phenomenal.

One of the things he talked about was the “Wise Reader”. He advocated finding one or two people who you really trusted and training them to read your work. This wise reader wasn’t looking for grammatical errors or sentence structure. They were simply being trained to react to your story. Did it make sense? Was it believable? Did they enjoy it? It’s a fairly good way to find the big problems in a story that a reader might not be looking for if they’re focused on grammar.

But the number one rule of this process for the writer is that the wise reader is Never Wrong. Ever. They might not have the same reaction to your story as someone else. They might not have understood something that you thought was pretty clear. And they most certainly don’t know how the story should be fixed. But the reader’s reaction, no matter what the cause, Is Not Wrong. And the reason why, is because once you send a story out into the world, you no longer have control of it. It no longer belongs to you. Their reaction is honest and regardless of whether or not you choose to change the story, you just can’t argue with, “That’s how the story made me feel.”

I’ve been running into a lot of talk lately about sexism online. The Hawaiian shirt worn by Matt Taylor at the announcement that we’ve landed on an asteroid has been one of the many focal points of this discussion. It was unprofessional and immature at the very best, sexist and demeaning at the very worst. People have been making claims that it’s incidences like this shirt that are one of the things that are keeping women from entering the sciences.

This whole discussion bothers me. A lot. I do not consider myself a feminist. I am not a social justice warrior. I don’t just stay clear of these discussions, I usually avoid the people having them. I’m not interested in having to pick a side.

I don’t like the angry, defensive men who lash out with sexist blanket statements about women. They feel they are defending themselves and that to preserve their masculinity from the attacks of the feminists, they must lash out. There is a certain percentage of them that are crude, because they simply don’t know how else to be in the face of being accused of crudeness.

But I equally don’t like the feminists who believe that all men are pigs and must be put in their place. Historically, women have had it hard, but with every group who fights for freedom and equality, sometimes it’s hard to know when to stop fighting. Or even which battles are worth fighting. People talk all the time about things like the “wage gap”, but if you actually look at the way the numbers are calculated, the statisticians are comparing nurses and school teachers to doctors and lawyers. When you compare the wages of the sexes in the same fields, there’s almost no gap at all. What small gap exists (7% - not the 45% usually claimed) exists because of life choices women make, like taking time off to raise their children. This, among a great many other things, makes me distrust the label of feminism deeply. I was once told that what I needed was to align myself with the "good feminists" to help defend myself against the "bad feminists". I'd quite frankly like to stay out of those fights altogether.

Which brings me back around to the stupid shirt that started it all. If you follow the arguments about it all, the shirt is being fought over by the men who feel threatened and the feminists who feel they’ve got proof of man’s debauchery. There’s been almost no discussion about the actual issue. The shirt was inappropriate for a professional context. It’s that simple.

Many women, me included, felt that a shirt with half naked women plastered all over it was inappropriate and quite frankly, it made me uncomfortable. I don’t appreciate pictures of g-stringed women showing up in the Facebook feeds of the people I follow either. Does that make me a feminist? Nope. It makes me a mother of young boys who would have liked to have shown her boys (who are being actively encouraged towards the sciences) a video of a great technological achievement of our day. It makes me a mother who doesn’t want to have to hide my Facebook feed from my kids because of other people’s choices. My plan is to teach my sons to be the kind of men who would never consider the half-naked body of a woman to be either an appropriate fashion statement, or an appropriate picture to share. I’m married to the kind of man who would object to that and that’s the kind of men I intend to raise.

Like Scott’s wise reader, it doesn’t matter if the shirt was his favorite made for him by a friend. It doesn’t matter that it was off hours and he came rushing into work to give the press conference. I was made uncomfortable and that isn’t wrong. It also isn’t feminist. It’s my honest reaction. Is his shirt going to keep women out of science? Probably not. There are more women in the fields of science now than there ever have been. Some estimates at the university level are as high as 60%. It’s more likely just to get him fired when all those young women head out into the field and eventually one of them gets hired as his boss.

Mostly I don’t like that I can’t just not like the guys shirt without having to pick a side. I am the mother of two very active little boys and if you want to talk about sexual inequality, I could really go on about the modern education system’s intolerance of normal boy behavior, due to the overly feminine makeup of educators. There is a reason why so many boys are on Ritalin and it isn’t because they’ll all broken. In the long run, is it going to matter if we get our girls into science if we lose ours boys in the process? That’s not going to fix anything. That’s just going to shift it.

I get that men are tired of being accused of being pigs. A great many of them aren’t. I’ve spent many years building my closest friendships with some of the very best men this world has to offer.

But can’t I not like a guy’s shirt without being labeled a hysterical feminist either? There is a whole lot of room in the middle ground called ‘simple decency’ between those two extremes. All I am is a mom who had an honest reaction to a shirt. You might not agree with me, but you can’t tell me that I’m wrong either.

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Finding time to write

Since placing in Writers of the Future, I’ve been in a bit of a panic. That was all I had ready, so now what? I can’t be a writer on just one published story. Shortest career in history.

So I’ve been trying to find ways to slip writing into my schedule more than I have. Which is tricky. I go to conventions and sit in panels filled with men who tell me that finding time to write at home is easy. All they have to do is focus and if the kids act up, they just send ‘em to talk to mom!

Well, that’d be a lot easier, if my name wasn’t mom.

My reality, that I’ve had to accept, is that I simply won’t ever have 14 hours a day for three straight months to focus on spitting out a novel. I just won’t. I’m not the primary breadwinner. I am the primary caregiver. And it's pretty much going to be that way until the youngest leaves home. The best I can hope for is 8 hours a day, 5 days a week during the school year once my little one hits first grade. Only somebody still has to do the laundry.

Anyway, in my quest to find time to write, I bought the NanoWrimo Writing Tools Story Bundle as advertised by Dave Farland. It’s a bunch of e-books about writing, one of which was Million Dollar Productivity by Kevin J. Anderson. In his 25 year career, he’s written something like 130 books or so. I’m assuming that number is higher by now because that man never stops writing!

I was a bit skeptical at first. I was expecting things like, “Think about your story all the time.” That one was in there and it wasn’t a surprise. But do you have any idea how hard it is to follow even the simplest thought from point A to point B with “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” interrupting your thoughts every 30 seconds? It’s like wearing the thought canceling earphones from Harrison Bergeron, designed to make even the brightest of person below average in less than a day!

But then there were some other suggestions that really caught my eye. Keven J. Anderson hikes A LOT. Which, when he first mentioned I was a little jealous of. I love hiking and it’s one of the things that have given way in the face of all the rest of my life’s responsibilities. But as he hikes, he dictates into a voice recorder. He can dictate several chapters of first draft in a day, then he sends it out to be transcribed. There are times when he employs 3 typist full time to keep up with him. Cool Huh?

Wasn’t sure it’d work for me, but I thought I’d give it a go. For the past 2 days, I’ve turned my phone off and hiked into the nearby national forest. I’ve always talked to myself anyway.

Total breakthroughs on the story that I’m working on! I’ve been stuck for a week. This afternoon, I took my laptop, got as far as a picnic table and pumped out 1200 words of the climax in about an hour and a half. When I got stuck, I got up, hiked around and brainstormed into the recorder. When I figured it out, I sat down and wrote. Not quite his method, and I haven't exactly climbed any 14ers, but 2 days in, it’s working for me.

And bonus, because I was 20 minutes from home, there were no looming chores to bother me. Everybody else’s needs got left behind. All I had to focus on was writing, brainstorming and enjoying an incredibly beautiful fall day. Now all I need to do is figure out where I can go in the winter time where I can walk around, talk to myself and not get kicked out for weird-ing out the other people in the room.  

I’m a fan. Even though I have an office, I’m going to keep leaving the house to write. I’m going to start carrying my voice recorder everywhere I go. And I’m going to keep taking advantage of the little moments I can find in the day. Eventually progress will be made, right?

I’m hoping to get my story finished before NanoWrimo starts so I can spend the month doing first drafts. Only 7 days to go. NanoWrimo has made November the best month of the year!

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Another story sent in

Well, today I sent out my second submission ever. Ah! It was to a writing competition with a word limit of 3500 words. So much harder than I thought it would be!

The story is called 26 Minutes. It's about a girl's who's been infected with a virus that's turning everyone into mindless mutant monsters. She has a baby in her care that might just hold the key to curing everyone. If she can manage not to kill him first.

In fact, when I started the story, I thought it was going to be flash fiction-- just 1000 words. I just barely managed to squeeze the story out to exactly 3500 words. Not a word to spare. When I turned it over to my editor friend, he actually told me not to send it in until I'd fleshed it out to novella length. But, since it was already mostly done, I made what changes would fit and sent it off anyway. The worst they can say is no. And since no won't do any real harm, I can always flesh it out longer and sell it somewhere else later.

I'm pretty good at being tender when it comes to criticism, even when it's not really criticism. A friend of mine once said that writer's were all raving egomaniacs with poor self esteem. I find the statement pretty true. He was probably quoting someone. When I wrote the story, I was sure that I was going to be able to write something super short and when my editor said I hadn't really managed what I thought I had, I was pretty crushed for a few hours. Right up until my husband handed me a calculator and pointed out that right now at 6 cents a word, my story is only worth so much. Is it really a bad thing to be asked to write it out at 5 times the original length and make 5 times the money on it? It's still a good story. I just need more of it.

So, now my kids get out of school in a week and a half and my time to write this summer will be cut back drastically. Which is frustrating, now that I'm actually getting somewhere. But the ideas are still flowing and collecting, so I think I'm still going to be able to make good use of at least part of my time. I've spent the past couple weeks since April rewriting this story and my WotF story and getting them both sent in, plus putting in my garden and catching up on all the household work that's been ignored for too long. It's been amazing how hard it's been to focus on anything since the writing slowed down. I think I might actually get more done when I'm squeezing life in around the writing and not the other way around.

I find out at the end of July how this story did, and at the end of September what came of my WotF story. My fingers are tightly crossed. I guess my next step is to start prepping my next WotF entry. Submission starts in July.

It feels so good to finally be getting somewhere. My husband laughed at me the other for wanting to be a writer. It involves a very large amount of both waiting and criticism. Both of which, I really, really don't handle very well. I guess I'll just to practice, right?

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Life really is good, isn't it?

One day left of Camp Nano and I'm sitting at 53500 words and 5 completed first draft short stories. That's just 1500 words away from finishing. I'll be able to easily pump that out today on revisions and rewrites by the time I pick my youngest up from preschool. And I've got to say, I'm feeling really good about this.

Last year, my husband announced that he was going back to school to get an MBA. It wasn't a surprise to me. We'd talked about it on and off for years and I knew it was a goal that was eventually going to catch up to us. But it was something I'd been dreading. When we got married, we were both in school and it was easy to balance schedules and homework and everything else, because we were both doing it together. But this time around we're balancing his full time job, full time school and two little kids at home. It was not sounding fun to me at all.

But when he started classes in January, I realized his MBA might just be the best thing that's ever happened to my writing career. The boys are in school for a good part of the day, which has opened up all kinds of day time hours for me. But now in the evenings, I'm looking forward to the nights when he's got homework. Because I get to sit down and write for hours without any worry about neglecting kids or husband.

And just so you all know, I have the best husband in the entire world. With the amount of time his MBA program was going to take this year, I was most worried about having time with him as a family. Eighteen months is a long time to not see dad. But he's gone out of his way to make every minute at home count. If the boys are up, he's playing Lego's with them. If there aren't any assignments pressing, he's reserved the evening for me. I think the hardest thing so far this year has been realizing that when he has time between classes, I need to fold the laptop up and make sure I'm making time for family too. I'm determined not to let a fantastic marriage drift apart, just because we're both trying to get somewhere. And it feels good to finally know that we are both getting somewhere.

Last night, we started keeping 'gratitude journals' with our kids. We have one son who simply isn't capable of seeing anything but the sunny side. Our other son is pretty upbeat. most of the time. But when he gets down, his entire world falls apart and there's nothing good anywhere. And there never will be ever again. He can be pretty dramatic. We thought that keeping a daily account of the good might gently help to steer his focus. Remind him of what we have. Our little family has a lot to be grateful for. Brandon and I are keeping these journals too.

My first entry was about gratitude for my husband. He believed in in my ability to write before he ever read a single word I'd put on paper. He encouraged me to seek an education and to think of ideas and concepts that when I was young, I'd have sooner ignored. He's made time for me to write and read every word I've written since I started. He's become a fantastic Alpha reader for me, because he wants to see my writing in print as much as I do. But most of all, thirteen years into our marriage, I still know that he loves me. More now than ever. I was pretty picky when I chose my husband. Turns out it paid off. I wound up with the very best.

And I am very, very grateful.