Blog Archives - Third Quarter '07
September 2007
[Sunday September 30] Room to write
Thought
you guys would like to join me on my journey toward having a real live study
where I can finally find the peace and space and quiet to write.
Still on vacation, and planning on getting a chunk of the remedial work done this week. Planning to paint, air-condition, get in some nifty new furniture, a rug, a plant....but I'm getting beyond myself.
First,
the 'before' pictures. Well, they're not exactly before before,
seeing that this is what my study looked looked after I spent several
weeks cleaning up the crap off the floor, putting in shelves, and giving way a
hundred or two of my books.
Yes.
Really. This room actually was a whole lot worse.
[Friday September 28] Home again.
Hey, y'all waiting on me to give you the low-down on my trip, right? Well, what can I say. Had a ball. Saw cool places. Ate like a pig.
Went
on the London Eye, a heinously tall Ferris wheel type thingy that lets you see
the historic bits of London from way too high.
Acted like a pussy on account of how I'm terrified of heights and all. It took all of my courage, and the pair of balls I don't have, even to stand for this photo. The rest of the time I was crawling around, whimpering, trying not to throw up, and wondering when the hell we were going to get off this thing.
Met a real horse!
Got shit upon by a seagull. It hit so hard I thought I'd been shot.
And I hardly even limped. Hooray!
[Friday September 14] Travel... bugger!
Finally, I'm ready to roll! I'm really excited; it's been ten years since I've visited my favorite city. What a ten years it's been! 10 books, 2 kids, no wonder I haven't been traveling!
I haven't even allowed myself to get excited before this, so worried was I about my leg, which is sore but serviceable. It shouldn't ruin my holiday.
The only thing I'm not looking forward to is the travel itself. I loved flying when I was a child; now it's just a huge pain in the ass, especially the sitting around for 12 hours part. That and not sleeping.
But I'm off and happy about it. Look out for my missives from London...if I can find a cyber cafe with Frontpage installed, that is! There's got to be at least one, eh mate?
[Thursday September 13] The Princess Bride
I was flicking through the channels and came across The Princess Bride my favorite move of all time.
In moments I was crying to my heart's content, tears rolling down my cheeks. Glad nobody was watching. It's embarrassing, really, the world's most cynical romance writer having a weep over the world's funniest, heartstring-pullingest romance movie. Ah, bliss.
P.S. London tomorrow. Leg slightly better. I can walk again!
[Saturday September 8] Gimp
Five days to go before I hop a plane (okay, 3 planes) to wonderful, wonderful, darling London, one of my favorite places in the world, and I'm still nursing my gimp leg.
All of a sudden my vacation leave has turned into sick leave, drat it, and I'm hoping for a miracle so that I'll be able to walk straight by the time Friday rolls around.
'Cause I'm not missing this for anything!
[Thursday September 6] Sound and Fury
If I'm to be honest with myself, I'd have to admit that half the time, when I'm yammering on about how I'm dying to get loads of time to myself to write, I'm full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Here I am, with a whole month's vacation stretching before me, time to do pretty much anything I damn well please, not not, not two, but three ideas for romance novels in my head, and an idea for a new literary, if you please, and you know what?
I'm too scared to start. I've been fiddling and fussing over my site for the last hour, fixing links, killing dead files, anything but actually writing. Nervous, anxious, worried that I won't be able to get what's in my head down on paper in a way that'll satisfy me and you.
The only thing that's keeping me from despair is the knowledge that all writers go through this from time to time, and it will pass. I'm certainly not alone in the whole writing jitters thing. After all, didn't old whatsizname burn the first draft of War and Peace?
[Tuesday September 5] Ahh moment?
Those of y'all who could be bothered to check in with me more than once a year or so would know I've been counting down till my vacation starts (on September 10) for more than a month and a half. Such is the pathetic state of my existence that the mere prospect has been the only glimmer on my horizon for so long.
Anyhoo, I am actually home from tonight, not exactly on vacation yet per se, but on sick leave, thanks to a gammy hip. How'd I garner myself a charming affectation such as a limp? I took my students to the world famous Pitch Lake at La Brea (no, not that one, the one in Trinidad.)
It's a huge lake of, well, pitch, that you can walk on, if you enjoy admiring several hundred thousand tons of pitch, tar and asphalt. We were at a loose end. So sue us. It's one of the seven wonders of the world, you know.
The guide, charming fellow, heeded my warning that we had to be back at the bus in 45 minutes, and at the appointed hour minus about 3 minutes took off at a pace, determined to meet my deadline. Equally determined not to reveal my phenomenal lack of condition to 15 fit youngsters, I took off after him, even as the younger and wiser ones continued to saunter.
The result? A busted hip. AND I walked on it for two weeks before I went to see a doctor.
And they say writers are smart.
[Saturday September 1] Ass end of August
You can't imagine how happy I am to see the ass end of August! I knew going into it that it was going to be an onerous month, and it hasn't proved me wrong.
But I made it out the other side not much worse for wear, and quite hopeful that September will bring much good.
Why? well, for starters, I go on a month's vacation in one week's time...and a whole week of that will be in London! Cue every happy cockney type song you can think of. I'll go for Tubthumping by Chumbawamba:
"He drinks a whisky drink
He drinks a vodka drink
He drinks a lager drink
He drinks a cider drink
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the good times
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the better times:
'Oh Danny Boy
Danny Boy
Danny Boy...'
I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never going to keep me down
Pissing the night away
Pissing the night away"
Not that I plan on, uh, drinking hard in London pubs or anything....
But I haven't had a vacation to myself since about 2000 or so, and on that occasion I wound up with chicken pox in California. So this time, I'm looking forward to cramming a whole lot into a teeny little week. I'm gonna:
-
Eat loads of exotic stuff. I dunno, Turkish food, cream puffs, hot pakistani curry...
-
Visit the markets. Haven't been to Shepherd's Bush in about 19 years, if memory serves.
-
Find cool locations for my next hot romance.
-
Drink a cold cider and eat a hot cornish pasty in an English pub.
Hey, I'm also open to suggestions. Anybody been to London lately and knows of something I should do?
August 2007
[Monday August 27] I need to learn to be a bigger whore
Media whore, that is. These past few weeks of media attention have been quite enjoyable. Not because I always have to have the cameras rolling when I'm around, dahling, but because it's proven to me that, contrary to popular (meaning my) belief, a prophet can in fact have honor in her own country.
The truth is that I've been so convinced that my own people would dismiss me as a mocking pretender (on the premise that Trini ting eh no good) that I never really bothered to promote myself here. That and the fact that I've spent the last few years of my life spawning.
But if I am to survive, in this business, I'll need local support, and I'm gonna have to shake off that crappy idea and pronto. Furthermore, I'm gonna have to get out there and mingle, meet influential people, and probably be seen just a teeny bit. I used to go out, you know! I clubbed and went to art galleries and did stuff that other people do. Don't even know why I fell out of that.
Well, I do. Two reasons, and their names are Riley and Megan. But enough of that excuse. God invented grandmothers to babysit. I know sometimes I think I'm not cool enough or trendy enough or well dressed enough to hang out with the artsy-fartsy crew, but I have to get over that, too.
So, gentle reader, I will be perusing the social pages, and perhaps even attending an art opening or two. I may not have highlights in my hair, but I do have hair, goddamit.
[Thursday August 23] Out with the Bathwater
So far, I've diligently cut over 10,000 words from Dear Rita, but as I get into the final third of the novel, it gets more and more difficult.
The action is more intense, and every word counts, and I have begun to realize that cutting too deep would do nobody any good. I'm going to have to be more careful, more delicate, before I get carried away and wind up with gaping wounds in the story.
Oh,
hey, I saw my TV interview on
WIN TV last night, the cocktail party for Yavani, the winner of the Simona
Taylor writing contest. It was well produced, well put together. I
did okay on the questions, but I find my face looked so gaunt and thin. I
am finally beginning to look my age. How sad.
Maybe my vacation will help solve that problem!
[Tuesday August 21] Serendipity
Had the coolest night on Saturday. We had the prize cocktails for the Simona Taylor short story writing contest I'd been judging these past few weeks.
I have to admit I was a little nervous about the contest. What if people thought the story I picked was lousy? What if none of the stories were good enough and I had to pick a winner anyway?
Then
I read the second to last entry and was totally blown away. This young
girl, Yavani Rooplal, wrote the bestest story; she had romance, she had danger,
she had humor, she had suspense, and, very importantly, she understood the
concept of the short story and all it entails. Many of the other entrants,
although they understood the romance genre, wrote the first chapter of a romance
novel and just tacked on an "I love you" paragraph just to end the story, rather
than write a self-contained short story.
And she was delightful, a really well-raised young lady, bright as a bulb, graduated with honours from my Alma Mater. We had a few cocktails and laughed at how we were both nervous at the prospect of having to drink booze and try to look sophisticated doing it.
And the serendipity part? The lovely lady who interviewed me for the TV special is also the editor of one of the coolest magazines in the country...and says she's willing to have me write for her. AND she's got contacts who'd be willing to hire me, too.
Looks like I might actually make a writer out of myself after all.
[Wednesday August 15] The Ides of August
Never thought I'd be so glad to see a month halfway through. It's been an awful one, coming on the heels of a slightly less awful one. Full of stress, with work coming out of my whoopsie-daisy, to the point where my only goal for this month is to survive it intact.
But the cutting project is going swimmingly so far. I'm down about 4,000 words. Not bad, for a first time. And I don't think the book has been harmed. If anything, it has opened my eyes to how verbose I can be at times.
Which is a signal to me to shut up now. *Gone*.
[Monday August 13] On a dime
No, I'm not coin collecting again. I was just thinking how life can turn on a dime. One minute I'm spending a hot, normal, busy Sunday folding laundry and cleaning out my kitchen cupboards, next minute my daughter's eating a wild mushroom she found in the garden and vomiting like a sick pig.
One minute you're minding your own business, then next you're in the A&E biting your nails.
All's well, though, although after having thrown up a grand total of 13 times and suffered through a wicked bout of diarrhea, she's sore at both ends. But it has made me think about how life just comes at you, and how prepared you have to be for just about anything.
I mean, what if that mushroom had been a little more toxic?
[Saturday August 11] Think small
Okay, I think that after two days of editing down Dear Rita, I've discovered that the key to drastic word count reduction lies not in chopping out whole scenes and chapters, but in thinking small.
Word by word, I'm going through it, performing minor surgery rather than butchery, and removing a startling number of useless garbage words like "that", "very", "quite", "just", "really" and suchlike.
I was really horrified when I first heard about this cut, but now, I'm looking
forward to the experience. I think that in the long run
it'll make me a better writer.
[Thursday August 9th] Found her!
Found that wascally muse. turns out she was there all along, just bored.
Started my new book. I sat down on Sunday and banged out SIX WHOLE PAGES. Okay, big whoop. But it's a start.
I've also upon my dreaded cutting exercise. Dear Rita needs to be cut by, oh, about 17,000 words. *Rattling sound of loins being girded.* *Deep resonant sighing of author*.
And the massacre begins.
[Saturday August 4th] All talk, no action
Couldn't wait for August to start writing again, eh? Champing at the bit to get started on my new novel, huh?
Well, we're four days into the month and I haven't gotten off my ass to write the first word.
Where is your muse now, writer?
[Wednesday August 1st] Emancipation Day
It's Emancipation Day in Trinidad and Tobago. As a historical note, this country was the first in the world to declare a holiday to celebrate the emancipation of the slaves.
It's 6:20 a.m. and I am up and excited and at my computer. Why am I up? Kicked in the head by one of my kids. Why am I excited? Because it's August and my self-imposed writing ban is over.
As I've said, my customary one-month ban after I finish a book is supposed to be a mini-vacation, a mind-spa of sorts, but it just hasn't worked out that way this time. I'm supposed to be all spunky and refreshed and champing at the bit, but I feel as worn out as a soggy old floor-rag.
Ah, god bless the day job.
Anyway, I've committed to my agent that I will supply a 4-book proposal to her by the end of September, when my vacation is over. I've never done this before; I usually get a 2-book contract off a one-book proposal. But I think it's time I stopped talking out of my ass and got this writing career on the road, don't you?
Hey, I have a 7:00 a.m. interview on Thursday on a local station, Gayelle. Looking forward to it, even though it means I have to get up at 4:30. It's all rootsy and cultural and whatnot. My sister used to work with them when they were a show, not a station. It'll be cool.
[Saturday July 28] $2.14!
It's a sad, sad state of affairs when the highlight of my week is actually meeting and exceeding my goal of finding more than a dollar scattered about.
Professionally and personally, it's been one of the most difficult and stressful in recent memory, the kind of week in which my only goal each day was to successfully maneuver my car to and from work every day without passing out from fatigue.
It's sort of made a mockery of my writing holiday month, in which I was supposed to recoup and regenerate after finishing The Lying Game. I was supposed to return to writing in August refreshed and rearing to go, but I know that next month will be as hard as July, if not worse, because of pressing projects at work that will demand sustained concentration, lots of early morning and late afternoons, none of which I'm good at.
The only light on the horizon (apart from my vacation starting September 10th....yay!) is a big promotion for Then I Found You that's going on right now. It's such a wonderful thing to finally have something exciting happening with my books in Trinidad! Hooray! I just hope that, because of all this stress, I don't look my age for the cameras...
[Sunday July 22nd] Murder your darlings
Who was it that said "Murder Your darlings?" Hang on, I'll Google it while I talk to you.
Whoever said it, they ought to know I'm about to become a mass murderer of Gacyesque proportions.
Why? I just heard that I'm being transferred from the Arabesque line to the Kimani line. No problem; life goes on. My last two books, Dear Rita and The Lying Game, have been transferred too.
Thing is, the Arabesque line is about 85,000 words...and the Kimani line hovers round about 70,000. Eeek. What I'm sayin', boys and girls, is that I'm now being called upon to cut each book down by about 15,000 words.
Thus commenceth the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. How? How? I've never done such a drastic cut before. I've been thinking of how to do it, and I know, theoretically, that the best way to do this is to delete unnecessary scenes, descriptions and sub-plots...but to me, they're all necessary!
I'm their mommy, remember. I created them. The only thing I didn't do is go into labour and squeeze 'em out. Cutting them now will be like having a perfectly healthy baby and then the hospital tells you you can keep the baby, but you're going to have to amputate two perfectly good legs.
So, there's what I'm going to have to do. Won't be easy, but a shot of whiskey and a wooden dowel between my teeth and I'm game to have a go. I'm a brave little girl; I can do this.
Oh, and it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said it. Smart fella.
[Wednesday July 11] Pajama party
Scared the crap out of myself at about four a.m. when I rolled over in bed to come face to face with Chicken, my daughter's hideous stuffed duck. It's got swimming-pool-blue glass eyes and a malformed orange bill, both of which were mere inches from my nose as I opened my eyes. What hellish toy-maker's imagination dreamed that up, I don't know. I snatched it up and threw it from me like it was alive.
And that's when the party really got going. Riley started talking loudly in his sleep, in his perfect imitation American accent, his new affectation courtesy Saturday morning cartoons. Much of his conversation had to do with wanting to kill his sister.
Who, not to be outdone, was also dreaming, and woke up bawling for her slippers. My suggestion that she shut up and go back to sleep was met with such prolonged shrieking that I finally admitted to myself that the only solution to the problem would be to crawl out of bed in the dark, without glasses, and feel around under the never-used crib for her slippers. Hoping my hand didn't encounter anything arachnoid down there.
I found a pair of green bunny slippers and gave them to her. Not those, she screamed. I went back down on my hands and knees wondering when last I was in that position in an entirely more pleasurable context, and brought out the rubber slippers she wears in the garden. I was too tired to care if she wore them in bed. Not those either, Mummy!
At that point, I clambered back into bed and let her cry it out. Somewhere outside the window, an early-rising bird laughed softly. Welcome to my world.
[Thursday July 5] - Losing it (and not in the way you think, it's way too late for that)
Judas H. Tapdancing Priest on a hellbound raft, I need a shrink. Or a vacation. Preferably in a villa on the South of France, but right how I’m not so picky. You won’t believe what I did yesterday. I blithely took the kids shopping at the mall, and left my car door open. No, not unlocked. Not ajar. I mean yawning open at 90 degrees.
We came back to the car, all package-laden and happy, to see, coincidentally, a co-worker of mine standing outside his van next to my car, looking at it. I thought, oh, shit, he hit me. Then I realized what was up. I tried to act like maybe someone had broken into it, to avoid the news getting back to the office that Roslyn Carrington was losing it in a spectacular fashion. (Although to tell the truth, losing it spectacularly is way more glamorous than slowly unraveling like an old sweater.) But he sussed me out right away and asked me if I remembered leaving it open. I mumbled something unintelligible and hid my face behind the wheel.
I was glad to discover that the car hadn’t been fiddled with, but not surprised. I’m sure that any potential miscreant had figured that any car left that wide open in a public place either belonged to a gangsta or had a dead driver slumped at the wheel.
It’s work, you know. Aaaargh. I’m under attack by a stampede of projects, all overleaping themselves and falling down upon the other, to mangle a line from Shakespeare. It’s like walking through a Stephen King novel where ghosts rise up from the ground and clutch at my ankles and beg, “Work on me! Work on me!” “No, Me! Me!” Moreover, none of them have a Chinaman’s chance of ever reaching a satisfying conclusion, since I’m too busy with all of them to lend my full attention to any one of them. That’ll learn me to wannabe a bigshot.
As usual, after having handed up my new manuscript, I’ve put myself on a mandatory month-long writing hiatus, just to give the brain cells a rest. I’m finding that really hard to stick to. I have the most fabulous idea for a new book and I’m dying to get back down to it, but you know how we obsessives are. Can’t stop thinking about writing. Matter of fact, if my writing was an ex-lover, right about now I’d be flobbing on his front steps bawling for him to take me back.
Pathetic.
[Tuesday July 3] - Money grubbing
I never thought I'd actually say this, but this idiotic little lark I embarked upon, a month or two ago, (for those who came in late, I'm talking about my new policy of picking up all the lost and abandoned coins I see lying on the ground) has actually grown on me. It's really gotten under my skin; it's a game, a challenge that tests my visual acuity, my lack of disdain for grotty, stinky, ground-in 1c peices and the billions of germs they carry, and my ability to set aside all shame and self-consciousness in order to bend over in plain view of complete strangers and pick up something that isn't mine.
Oh, laugh, my friend, but I'm making out like a bandit. Which is part of the challenge. How much money will I find today? Will I do better than yesterday? So far, my all-time record is whopping 76 cents and only one of those coins, let me add, was a quarter. I came in close today at around 65c, and to my unending anguish would have attained the holy grail of coin-gleaning (crossing $1) if it wasn't for the two rules I've added to my existing ones. For those of you who are contemplating taking up this scintillating hobby:
-
Don't pick up coins anywhere near the cashier in a store. She probably has to account for them.
-
Don't try to pick up coins when people are actually standing on them at the time. If they walk away after a while and leave them there, they're all yours.
But I have to say I've become a seasoned old pro at the sport. I even have my favourite hunting grounds, namely outside supermarkets and in parking lots. People seem to have their laps full of coins that just roll under their cars when they get out. The average parking lot is a veritable El Dorado. Oh, I've trained my eye to spot coins in the road even when I'm sitting in my car - although I haven't completely taken leave of my senses and actually tried to get out in traffic just to pick up a cent.
Scoff, Dear Reader, if you must, but I'm having a whale of a time...which, I'm sure, speaks to my mental state. The day I find a buck, it's drinks on the house for everyone!
