Writing during Seminars and Meetings

by Kay

Part of my job involves meetings and seminars, especially that we are now in job interview season. So I might be taking dual notes, one set to keep me focused and a second running set of ideas for a story.

I also write in the car. There wasn't much traffic in most of New Mexico when I did that, but I had to give it up in Alaska. Not enough of a shoulder and it was bumpy enough to render my journal unreadable. These days I'm more likely to pull off the road and write a note, but I have set off the horn more than once. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Distracting Cats

by Kay

There's a reason I go to McDonalds to write. The distracting cats, all two of them. First they want milk, then a ball or milk ring to chase, then tuuuunnaahh (you can almost hear them meow it), then to lay across my work, walk across the keyboard, sleep in the basket under the lamp just within petting reach, or, their favorite, curl up on my lap and cast a sleep spell, so I can't move to upset them.

They are now 12 cat years old now and are the human equal of 64 human years, according to one website I found. I guess that answers the question "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?"

Guess so. But I won't get much writing done.

Planning Pads

by Kay

The supply I cannot live without is Planning Pads.

These pads are 80 pages of thicker than normal paper, with a light blue grid on the front and lines (College ruled!) on the back. The sheets tear away, as long as you hold the top corner to get them started. The funky advertising cover tears away too, leaving a calm undersurface of blue, green or brown. The cover flips back, and the pad has a super strong back, just right for the "writing on your lap at conferences" tasks we do.

The underside of the cover gets dated when I start, because one rule that keeps me going is the mantra "Use up the pad!" That way, I try not to agonize over the quality, but get my thoughts down in a free-flow jumble of energy. I'm a terrible typist, so I start my many lists and bubble diagrams on this raw resource. And the 5 colors (and three sizes) of sticky notes that nestle inside the back cover are pretty cool too.

I just bought a new stack for the pile at home. There's one in every writing bag, near my bed, at school, in the car.. Ah! I'm ready to write!

Writing Olympics

by Kay

My Olympic discipline has been rather like a series of quarter finals with a little each day, and then a big finish. I missed on Monday and Tuesday, but wrote the remaining days for a total of 11 hrs. I just need to even things out a little better.

Not counted was the time I spent reading “Specials” by Westerfield and another novel in the Dresden Files series. I’ve also been outlining novels, to look more closely at technique. “Breaking Dawn” by Stephanie Meyer is reserved as a reward for hard work.

Soon school will force me into the 6-9 am slot, and we’ll see how many mornings I can make it to McDonalds. I’m training a whole new group of counter staff on “50-50 caff-decaff, 3 cream, 3 sugar” so you know they are expecting me.

The hardest part - pinning things down

I think the hardest part of a novel for me is pinning things down, and keeping them pinned down. I watched my cat Emer the other day. She pounced on the feather toy, but a little wriggle from me made the string look more enticing, so out went her paws in rapid succession. The string was tired down, leaving the feather free to be whipped away. What she thought was solid (her hold on the prize) was an illusion, and it was wasn't hard to totally exhaust her, especially by letting her capture the fleeting sense that she has accomplished something.

This is how the writing process goes for me. It isn't really a question of beginnings, middles and ends, although I do think the middles are the hardest for me. It's more like seeing shadows of the project come and go through the mist of other choices, other possibilities, consequences, and scenes played out by the actors in my head, with camera angles and directorial instructions shouted out in a whisper. At times, I am surrounded by characters, each arguing or begging for a part in the opus. It is hard to tell who to listen to, and when. An "excess of imagination" seems such a neutral term for it. I'm still getting used to the problem that each choice narrows some paths and widens others, and you don't have a breadcrumb path to help in choosing which way to go. Many paths work, but they lead to different stories.

So, like a channel surfer with cable, I get flashes of beginnings, scenes, cliffhangers, "feel good endings" and deep conversations, often from several projects simultaneously, while I try to figure out what to wrestle into the current novel.

Sound familiar, or am I the only one?

Summer Goals from the Desert

I would like to get the following underway:
1. return from the desert,
2. move my office and lab,
3. make duty visits to relatives,
4. jump start my current writing project,
5. have something surprising and wonderful for the retreat.

It seems so simple, really, even benign. Post a list, how hard can that be? Not hard until I start thinking of the ten-minute tasks that need to back these goals up, and the fact that the summer feels more than half over, and, and, and - Well, I'll do my best!

The Zero Draft

by Kay

It isn’t a rough draft I’m writing. It’s barely in this reality from some twilight place downstream of dreaming, waking, and hysteria. If I call it a zero draft and keep saying “Just get it down, you can fix it later” over and over, I have a fighting chance. I find drafts excruciatingly easy to abandon when the fear factor rises.

The people in McDonalds think I’m pretty strange. They also claim that some day my table will be famous. More likely it than me, probably.

The astute reader will notice that my posts are lagging behind the official QOTW posting "Week" but I won't use that famous quote as my comeback. Better. Never.

The Best Summer Ever

Kay’s view

When I was twelve, we lived for the entire summer on a 31 ft cabin cruiser. The marina was on an island in the middle of the St Lawrence River. I read books all day from one of the best kids libraries ever by riding the launch over to exchange books several times each week. To this day, a vacation of reading is still my favorite!

That same summer I also received a scholarship to attend a week-long painting class in town. My parents had planned to drive home for that week and could not change their plans. I don’t remember what I had to promise, but the upshot was that I spent a week on my own (the first ever!) with no more than a friendly neighbor’s occasional check up. I cooked, cleaned, took myself across the channel to class, painted a number of canvasses and tried hard to stay up past my bedtime (too tired!).

It was a glorious summer before seventh grade, when who you knew and who knew you, who spoke to whom, and peer pressure changed my world forever.

“I’ll have fries with that!”

I have an entire house to myself. Unfortunately, I can’t work in the quiet of my own home. My best writing takes place in the corner table of my local McDonald’s eatery, or up the road at a bagel/coffee shop. It seems I need the noise in order to concentrate. I have a bag fully packed with my project and tools that lives in my car just waiting for a chance to be put into play. And a place where everyone knows how I like my coffee. Once there, the bustle of the place just fades and I’m… inside my characters.

Who the heck is Kay?

I have many parts: a translator of science, a teacher, a writer, a weaver, a dreamer.
I live in the worlds I read: midgrade and YA, science fiction and fantasy, mystery.
I am the characters I read: Pyanfar, Sassinak, Kel, Diane, Taran (and so many others).
I live the characters I write: Becca Forester, Heral, Arkel Tevar Tris, Tora Jesek, Westelach sutai Horth.

So who am I? It depends on when you ask.