Twitter Funk

I sometimes get into a Twitter funk.  I have nothing interesting to say (admittedly, this may happen more often than I think it does).  No one is saying anything worth retweeting.  There are no fascinating or funny or fascinating and funny stories to link to.  There’s just nothing.

Or it might be me.

Not that I’m clever and witty and insightful all the time.  But sometimes I feel like I can fake it.  Or the other people on Twitter help.  Someone might make a comment I respond to and it turns into a “conversation”.  Others join in.  It can really get fun, and sometimes silly.

My kids help.  They say and do funny—in my opinion—things that end up on twitter all the time.  I know I’m not the only one who’s heard someone in her house say something and then turn and tell you “do not tweet that, mom”.

 

The idiots driving in front of me, standing behind me in the grocery store line, or even the ones who work with me, also help. 

Can’t someone just do something stupid already so I can tweet it?

But I do not want to tweet just to tweet.  LOTS of people do this.  LOTS.  Random thoughts that have no context or meaning to me at all.  You know what I mean-- the “this is what I ate for lunch” tweets. 

A lot of my tweeting has to do with my writing life.  Okay, pretty much most of it.  I tweet about my writing and my books and I follow lots of writers and people who love and talk about books. All. The. Time.

Funny thing about that—sometimes I love it.  In my “real world” (whatever that means) there aren’t nearly enough people who read and talk books (not to mention read and talk about the books *I* read).  I love knowing I can get on twitter and instantly be surrounded by like-minded people.  I can catch up on industry news.  I can check out new releases.  I can read excerpts and drool over Pinterest pins.  I can see if my favorite authors are writing.  I can find out if any authors are behaving badly. 

But sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I get tired of all of that too. I get tired of the “read my book, read my book” stuff.  And I follow a lot of reviewers.  I don’t know why, but lately there are a lot of harsh reviews out there.  Sure, the books might deserve it, but I get tired of seeing people bashing books. 

So, thankfully, I follow some not-reading-community people too.  Stephen Colbert, Andy Borowitz, The Bloggess, just to name a few.  They make me laugh and get me out of the book-world for awhile.  Which is probably a good thing.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong—there are plenty of writing-community people who are funny.  And informative and entertaining and all of that.  But sometimes it’s good to get out of the bubble, just like it’s okay for me to once in a while reach for a caramel macchiato instead of my most-major-addiction-of-all: Starbuck’s coffee-flavored bottled frappucinos. 

It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.

So, I want to know—who are the best non-reading-community people to follow?  Anyone that I’ve been missing all my life?

And how about the best reading-community people to follow? (and don’t say Smart Bitches or Dear Author.  Just don’t.)

Anyway... I do love Twitter most of the time.  I really do. 

So, Happy Tweeting To All!  May the Twitter-funk not hit you :)

Erin

The Herd

I have three munchkins a.k.a hellspawns upon occassion (stripping at McDonalds and applying vaseline to their hair springs to mind). And then when I met Master Chef, two more kids became part of the equation on a part time basis. For those of you who may be mathematically challenged (like me) allow me to put that together for you.

Five kids. All under the age of 10.

Some people look as though they're watching a clown car when we pull up, and can't figure out at what point we'll stop piling out of the van. On a recent trip to the zoo, the woman at the counter just shook her head when the kids swarmed around her. "You've got a big family."

Um, yeah.

Before I had kids and knew better, I used to joke about wanting twins. Now I have them. The two youngest are both 3 and only six months apart, and surprisingly enough they are often the easiest two to deal with. Six, Eight and Ten are way more dramatic.

Five kids isn't as wild as you might think. Meal times are usually a breeze and bedtimes go smoothly almost always. Traveling, though, in one vehicle is when things get a little more dicey. Especially when Six, Eight and Ten are sitting together and they start the whole "He was staring at me...he keeps kicking the seat...he put his elbow on me" game. And so it goes--times five.

I know you must be whimpering a little bit for me, right?

And then there are the times when we take the Herd someplace different, which is the point of the post. Last week we took them to the circus and for most of the show, they were great. They couldn't sit still to save their lives and were up and down more than the Bellagio water fountain in Las Vegas, but all were well behaved and had fun.

Except for the last 20-30 mins. By then they were all tired of sitting there and a couple started asking when it was time to go. By this time the circus was running later than we planned and Master Chef had to go pitch for his ball team.

Leaving me, one person, with the five munchkins. Are the whimpers getting louder?

So we get through the last of the circus with "When are we going home?" repeated only about twenty-two times, and then I wait for most of the crowd to clear out ahead of us, much to the munchkins dismay.

Then we head out.

Things are going fine. No real crowds and they're all in good spirits. And then we hit the lobby area. I immediately wrangle the twins, which Babygirl does not like at all. She wants to walk ahead with her brothers and doesn't care who in the place hears her complain about it. Loudly.

The six of us make it outside with me only losing sight of one of them for a few seconds. No big deal. And the best news, I can see the van.

Of course this is when things go awry.

Even though I'm holding his hand, one of the twins goes down and scrapes his knee. Babygirl, hearing him start to cry, turns up her own volume. So now I'm crossing the street and into the parking lot with two crying/screaming three-year-olds. Add to that some unwritten rule that boys should race each other to the car at every possible opportunity, and I'm then consoling one munchkins, fighting to keep a grip on Babygirl and alternately calling the other three boys by name in my fiercest listen-to-me-or-I'm-feeding-you-to-the-wolves voice.

Just as aside, I've been repeatedly told by Eight that we don't have wolves around here.

By some miracle, I've get them all strapped into the van without losing my mind completely, and for once they don't start that, "He's bugging me," vehicle torture. I think they were too tuckered out to pick on each other. Good news for me.

So what about you guys? Have you taken your munchkins somewhere and things got a little crazy? Are you as big a fan of car trips with 5 kids as I am? :)

12 Steps Back to Writing

Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety

I feel like I haven't written in ages.

For work, yes, out of personal necessity, of course... but not fiction. Not for the stories I like to lose myself in, or the characters who sometimes feel so alive I dream about them.


After being away for so long, it's a daunting task to see that blank page and know that somehow I need to create thousands and thousands of words, new worlds, and new people. So I'm taking baby steps, one of which is going through The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I started using this guide--more of a workbook, really--last year when creativity seemed elusive. I could write, sure, but nothing I felt inspired by. One of my favorite parts about TAW is the daily writing, three pages or 750 words of mind-clearing nonsense. I write about dreams and frustrations and snippets of conversations and personalities that are cluttering up my mind. With all of that out of the way, many distractions seem to disappear as well. I'll be blogging about my 12 Steps here periodically and on the Facebook and the Twitter.

What do you do when you feel less than creative? Have you worked through The Artist's Way before?

The Pre-Father's Day Post

I'm being frighteningly efficient this month and posting this early. By the time this post goes live I'll be back East visiting my parents with their extremely iffy internet connection. Given their age (my father will be eighty-six in September) I suppose I should be impressed that they have internet at all. My mother can't be bothered with figuring it out but father's always loved gadgets, so I guess it's not so surprising that he gets a kick out of keeping up-to-date with things...although not quite to my must-be-connected-all-the-effing-time-or-I'll-go-crazy standards. But I guess that goes without saying.

Anyway, since it's almost Father's Day, I thought I'd write a post about my father. That's him over there on the right with my niece Casey, by the way.

 I think he's finally as gray as I am, which is a relief, frankly. I take after my mother's family. We go gray early. Almost everyone else in my family takes after my dad. Genetics do not always play fair. 'Nuff said.

My father has always been very handy and good at building things. Like houses and stuff. He built the house I grew up in...

 

Looks nice, huh? But I'll be posting more about that next time.

The house is in Fort Lee, New Jersey, better known (well, once upon a time, anyway) as the home of Palisade's Amusement Park.



Every summer my father ran the miniature golf concession at the park. He spent a lot of his weekends there, working....you know, in his time off. You might think that meant that my sister and brothers and I got to hang out at the park all the time. Yeah, not so much.

On the other hand, every spring he had to re-landscape the course and he'd always bring the extra pansies home.

I always liked those...but I guess you can tell that pretty easily, huh?

My father has always worked very hard. He used to run the dress factory his parents opened in Union City, New Jersey.  That's not it in the picture below, by the way, but it is in Union City...

Anyway, my father not only ran the factory, he also maintained the building, dealt with the tenant who lived in the apartment upstairs, ran in and out of New York City several times a week picking up orders and delivering dresses, cut the dress pieces, repaired the machines, mediated the arguments that occasionally sprang up between the seamstresses...oh, and yeah, he did the payroll besides.

My first summer job, when I was fifteen, was working there with my father and grandfather. They were both early birds, so the hardest part of the job for this night owl were the hours. Six in the morning is no time to be going to work. I'm just sayin'.

The hardest part of the job for my father? That would probably be the fact that he hated the place. With a passion. For thirty years. But he went every day, five, six, sometimes seven days a week because it supported our family, my grandparents and helped support my aunts' families as well.

It was a fascinating summer though. Union City looked a lot like the set of West Side Story back then, still might for all I know, and I was introduced to all sorts of interesting new things. Things like mangoes and Cuban sandwiches, which I'd never even heard of before. See, my father loved them, but he knew my mother didn't so he never brought them home.

Actually, that was kind of unusual because he was always bringing home things that my mother probably wished he wouldn't. Things like turtles and chameleons. I know you can guess who those were for. Yes, I was a sucker for animals even then.

For years when I was a kid my family would vacation on a farm in Vermont every summer.

Despite the fact that my father always suffered from hay-fever, he loved visiting the farm. He even liked working there.

That's not the normal kind of thing most guests did, in case you were wondering. My mother would paint, us kids would play, ride horses, and generally have a good time.

 My father would have fun with the tractors and the haying. To each his own, I guess.

These days, my parents actually do live on a farm of sorts, in the wilds of Pennsylvania. My father spends a lot of time gardening. He also apparently spends a fair amount of time in the barn converting used cooking oil into bio-fuel for his use as well as several of his neighbors.



I haven't seen this operation in action yet, and I gotta say, from the pictures, it doesn't look all that attractive as an operation, but I still think it's just the coolest thing I've ever heard.

So on Thursday (or tomorrow in blog-time) he'll be getting cataract surgery. Wish him luck.

Guest Blogger Rue Alleyn - What Kind of Hero Turns You On?

I want to thank the NNN crew for inviting me to their blog. I love the eclectic sprit of this blog. You never know just what the subject will be, but you know every post will be entertaining. I hope my post today meets the standard, because I have a question. What kind of hero do you like most in a category type romance? 

I have to admit I've got a thing for heroes with the military in their backgrounds, either active-duty or veterans. Perhaps my own years in the USN have colored my preferences, but in my fantasy word there's nothing like a hunky, battle-hardened man with sharp senses, intelligence and the will to act. I've written all sorts of heroes, business men, engineers, cowboys, and forest rangers, even a sheriff or two. The heroes I find myself drawn to most are soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors. Especially sailors like Senior Chief Hank O'Mara of Off Limits, my latest erotic romance from Red Sage Publishing. You can check out an excerpt here http://rueallyn.com/off-limits-excerpt/. However, I don't write for my own pleasure but yours. So tell me, what kind of hero do you like? Post an answer and provide an e-mail address. I'll draw a winner and send that person a copy of Off Limits. 

Bio I wrote my first story around the age of five and read my first romance at the age of eight. I've been in love with being in love ever since. I'm happily married to my sweetheart of many, many years. we share the home of two cats, who condescend to allow me to feed them and clean their litter box. They occasionally permit me to pet them but demand my love and attention as their right. I am in awe of their feline ability to dominate with half a glance or a mere twitch of tail. I am insatiably curious, an avid reader and traveler. I love to hear from readers about your favorite books and real life adventures. I also love my work. Seriously, what could be more fun than sharing love and adventure with all your friends?

The Grammar Jerk Rides Again

I’m both a former English teacher and a former copy editor, a combination that makes me a natural-born grammar jerk, somebody who kvetches about errors in grammar and usage. I can keep my crankiness in bounds most of the time, but there are a few grammatical and usage mistakes that just drive me around the bend. And having access to a blog means I get a chance to vent about mistakes that I’ve been running across in articles and blogs THAT I SHOULDN’T BE SEEING THERE. So cover your ears, girls and boys, here comes another blast from the grammar jerk.

1. Simplistic. The word simplistic does not mean very, very simple. It isn’t a synonym for simple at all. In fact, it means over-simplified and it refers to people who ignore complexities or complications in their explanations. If you use simplistic to describe something, you’re judging it negatively. You wouldn’t call a set of instructions “very simplistic” unless they’re bad. If you actually mean something positive, just say simple. Similarly, the word fulsome does not mean very, very full. It’s another negative word (meaning excessive, particularly excessive praise). If you mean full, just say full.

2. Affect/Effect. Affect is used most frequently as a verb (although psychologists occasionally use it as a noun, in which case it means something rather different). Effect is used most frequently as a noun (although there’s also another, less familiar use as a verb). Confused yet? Don’t be. I’m willing to bet in 90 percent of the cases where you’ll use affect and effect, the former will be a verb and the latter will be a noun. So if you say something like I want to effect the results of the election or The affects of the election will be widespread, you’ve just screwed up. And whatever else you want to say about the election will be disregarded by us grammar jerks.

3. Imply/Infer. This one’s a bitch to keep track of, particularly since it’s the kind of thing grammar jerks like me will come down on you for. In fact, the reason I remember it at all is that I was chastised for screwing it up by the most terrifying professor in my college English department. When you imply something you’re suggesting that it’s so without actually saying it is. So if I say I’ll snarl at anyone who screws this distinction up, I’m implying that I’m a grammar jerk. On the other hand, when you infer something, you’re drawing a conclusion without having an explicit statement to go on. So when I say I’ll snarl at anyone who screws this distinction up, you can infer from that statement that I’m a grammar jerk. I’m guessing most people know what imply means because it’s the more common term. The main thing to remember is that infer means something different—it isn’t just a fancy way of saying imply.

Okay, now I feel better. At least for the moment. Sorry for intruding on your day with my picky criticisms.

Oh for Pete’s sake, did she really just write, “It's alright?” Ah geez, here we go again.…

All right (alright?), all you grammar jerks, I give you leave to vent. What are the mistakes that drives you bonkers?

Stitches and Words

 

In conjunction with getting our foundation repaired, hardwood floors replaced, and other neat stuff done to our house, I've been on a redecorating binge. I got rid of some furniture, recovered chair cushions, etc. etc. We had an old leather sofa that had been passed down through family and friends for 15+ years. By the time we got it, it had a couple of small holes which my dogs promptly turned into big gaping holes. They didn't eat the leather, just ripped out all the stuffing, and it wasn't reparable. It was very expensive when new, and the distressed leather just got softer and more supple as it aged, and it seemed a shame to throw it out. So we skinned the couch before we chunked it, and I decided to use the leather to recover some more chair and couch cushions.

The first cushion cover came out okay but not great. I've discovered that when doing home sewing projects, the first is always the worst - but I don't care, I'll still use it. I did some hand sewing to fix the visible problems, and then I went on to the next cushion---which turned into a nightmare. I don't know how, but I managed to cut each piece - top, bottom, and four sides - about an eighth of an inch too short. It wasn't going to fit the cushion. I could either add strips of leather, or I could start over.

It wasn't the first time that I thought of the similarities between writing and sewing.

At first, of course, I tried to just add leather strips, but it soon resembled some kind of Frankencover. I ended up having to rip out one whole side panel and cut a new one. I think that will solve the problem - but I might still have to completely redo it, and cut all 6 pieces anew.

I hate cutting -- it's absolutely the worst part about sewing, especially when you're doing something like this, and you have to keep cutting the same damn pieces over and over. The idea of having to drop a nearly-completed piece, and cut all new pieces, is too awful to contemplate.

It's the same thing when you're writing a book and you start to notice that things don't fit together as they should. Maybe your plot's too loose, or maybe it's too narrow. Maybe it feels like a randomly assembled group of scenes instead of a coherent plot, or nothing much happens and characters are just hanging around. It doesn't matter; if you're fifty thousand words in, you just can't face the idea of starting over. So you start sticking in little scenes to fit the cracks, or you drop lines here and there to explain the stuff that wasn't making sense, or you cut a character and a secondary plot. But then it's even more of a mess, the literary equivalent of the stuff you see on There I Fixed It.

"Screw it," you think. "I'll just write a whole different story."

If you've been on any writing blogs, you know that writers come in two flavors - pantsers and plotters. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants--i.e., they sit down at the computer and start typing with no idea what's going to happen, trusting in their imaginations to take them where they want to go. Plotters plot - they make out a map of the story and then they follow it, albeit usually with some detours.

I'm a dedicated plotter. There's no way I can just sit down and start typing and have anything happen. I have to have at least an idea of what's going to happen next.

Constructing a story, to me, is like sewing a garment or a cushion cover. First I measure the cushion/create the characters and their general arc. Then I start putting the pieces together. I don't always write scenes chronologically--I tend to write the scenes I "see"  most clearly in my head first. And I don't always sew garments in the same order. But in both cases I have to know ahead of time what I'm making and what it's supposed to look like when it's done.

Of course, you can't sew by the seat of your pants. I mean, I know some people who can sew without patterns, but you can't sit down at a sewing machine and just start going. You have to know at least if you intend to make pants, or a shirt, or a chair cover. But within the confines of what you're making, you can change things as you go along; you can make the sleeves short instead of long, or add pleats to the bottom of the chair cover (although why you'd want to do this, I don't know. Pleats are a pain in the ass.)

There are other differences. If your sewing machine breaks down, you're stuck until you get it fixed. If your computer breaks down, though, you can just switch to writing long hand, which is much easier than trying to hand stitch a skirt.

On the other hand, a sewing project is shorter and more finite than writing a book. A shirt or a skirt or a kid's costume has a limited number of parts, and once you put them together you're done, and it either looks good or it doesn't. Whether a garment fits and is well made isn't as much a matter of opinion as whether or not a book is any good. When I finish covering the couch cushions, I can sigh with satisfaction and sit down on the sofa and enjoy my handiwork. It's a tangible, visible accomplishment. A book, on the other hand, is ephemeral and theoretical and of uncertain quality until it's fully written, and revised, and revised and revised and revised, and then accepted for publication (or not!) and then released and reviewed and for the rest of your life you won't ever be certain if it was really any good. And unlike a cushion cover, which can be ripped up and resewn until it looks exactly as you want it to, once your book is published, that's it. It's fixed, unchangeable, unimprovable no matter how many great ideas you come up with for fixing that weak conflict or the scene near the end that everyone says kind of drags.

Sewing is also a great way to procrastinate on writing and yet still feel productive. Which is why I can't get back to the steampunk until I finish the couch covers...