Why is it that we get stuck on certain words when we write? We become enamoured with them, so much so that we use those certain words frequently. Noticeably.
I've just turned in my copy edits for DRIVEN TO INK. And I've discovered I have an unusual appetite for the word "just." On just about every page or so, there it was. The word "just." Just because I liked it, I guess. Just because it seemed to fit with the sentence. As it turns out, I took out most of them and it didn't make a bit of difference as far as the sentence was concerned.
I also love the word "warble" or "warbled," as Brett's phone warbled Bruce Springsteen several times throughout the book. Not anymore.
Skirt, skitter, and scurry are all used for the same sort of thing: Brett's eyes skirted around the room; Brett's eyes skittered around the room; Brett scurried up the stairs. Painful, really painful. They are now used sparingly.
It's hard to replace "looked," but everyone "looks" at everything and everyone so much.
Even in our speech, we all say things like "awesome," "totally," and we use the word "so" to put emphasis on things: I so don't like the Jonas Brothers.
Personally, I despise "24/7." It's overused and ridiculous.
My husband has started saying the word "literally" all the time. He inserts it in most of his sentences. I've noticed some political pundits using it, too.
I like the word "wingnut." I don't use it too much, but it truly does make a statement when I do.
... trying to get everything together for 1) Passover and 2) a trip to Boston we're leaving on tomorrow. SO... instead of posting a full-on blog, I thought I'd ask a few (entirely self-serving) questions.
1. What's the best book to take on vacation?
2. What's your favorite thing to do in Boston?
3. If you were an 8-year-old girl, what would be your favorite thing to do in Boston?
4. What are your top five, downloadable roadtrip songs?
Answer any or all -- and Happy Passover, Easter, Spring, etc. etc, etc!
You may remember last week's post where I told you about our big huge meaningful soccer game that was about to rock the world. And then got canceled due to rain.
Well we played on Saturday.
We went down early, 3-0. But in truth I wasn't upset. We were playing well and as I said last week, TTL are just a really good team. We managed to punch one in just before halftime and went to the half down 4-1.
My assistant coach and I were tough on the girls at halftime, letting them know they weren't running hard enough and they weren't doing some things they normally do. To our surprise, they actually seemed to be paying attention. Remember - they are six and seven years old.
We came out at halftime and punched one in quick.
Down 4-2 now.
Oh and hey we got another one. Down 4-3 now.
When we pushed the next one in to make it 4-4, our parents nearly went ballistic. Not sure I've ever seen them so excited in three years of coaching these girls.
Until we punched in another to go ahead 5-4.
Insanity ruled.
When we scored the last one to make it 6-4, you would've thought we'd just earned a birth in the Final Four.
The whistle blew and we won 6-4. Shut them out in the second half and came back from three goals down. And the girls knew what they had done.
I have coached multiple sports at multiple competitive levels for 13 years now. I have won triple overtime games and lost on last second prayers. I have been on both ends of lopsided games. But I have never had more fun being a part of a game than I did on Saturday. There are times in life when you just need something like that and on Saturday, those girls gave me a gift.
I'm jealous of everyone who's ever been lucky enough to publish with Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. Those bastards, I mean, they don't let you down on book design. They seem not only to care about who they publish, but what the finished product will look like. And goddamn, have they figured out a way to make tawdry, dirty crime fiction feel all literary and shit. Not that literary is better than genre, no no no. There's great stuff in both arenas, and complete shit in both arenas. I'm just saying that someone up there makes those designs enviable.
And don't bring up the original Black Lizard as "better", either. I've got a handful of those, and they look like cartoons.
Makes me hearken back to the days before I was born when Penguin did something similar, branding its line with a distinct look while at the same time individualizing some for each author. And look at the results! Risky. Someone loved these books enough to take risks with the designs, which is why they're sought after so much.
The paperbacks have some sort of vibe that hardcovers just can't achieve, no matter how well made. Look at the Uglytown and Bleak House Books hardcovers, gorgeous as they are, and yet there's a little something missing. Some "cool" factor than is lost out in favor of "classing up". Plus, while I respect the Hard Case Crime retro look, it's hard not to feel a little bit of "been there, done that" when I see those. I'm looking for design that keeps pushing forward.
While I'm sure the wave of e-books will eventually wash over us, and the whole concept of book design will change forever (just as I've now come to accept that I don't need the CD cases or liner notes to enjoy the tunes...sigh), I'm going to be an old curmudgeon when it comes to paperbacks because I wish I could hang them on the wall like art and admire them that way. Maybe I will. Where's my razor? Time to slice those covers off...
You've got faves too, right? Maybe the more recent Picador trade paperbacks for Harrison and Black. Or the beautiful Europa Editions. Or the fast-becoming-a-player Busted Flush Press covers, better and better each time out. Tell me about it.
SO, I turned in my book last week, and managed to take a couple of days off. A couple of days, you might ask? Why not a week? Or two? Or better yet, a month? Because I'm a dumbass and overscheduled myself for the first half of 2010. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not looking for sympathy, but I do have two projects that are due in a short amount of time, so to be honest, I'll be even busier through the next three months than I've been the past three months.
Because of deadlines, I've been horribly lax in my spring cleaning efforts the last two years. So on Saturday, something...compelled me to clean my closet and dresser drawers. I purged and organized and although I hated doing it, I love the end result. I can find things. I look in the closet and see tangible results.
Tangible results. That doesn't always happen when I'm writing. I can spend months on a book and feel like I'm spinning my wheels. Yes, I end up with a finished book, but it's not something that's immediately visible. Like a clean closet. Now I'm looking at other things that "should" be done--things I really hate to do, things that also have tangible results. Like spring yard clean up. Ugh. You should see the amount of pine cones, pine needles and turkey shit in my yard. Double Ugh. I know I should hire a yard clean up crew, but I'm unconvinced that we're out of danger for snow storms, and usually spring snow storms leave twice as much yard waste/debris in their wake. So...I'll wait. Yard work is one thing neither Mr. LGA nor I enjoy. I think we'd rather re-roof the house than pick up a freakin' rake--and no, we're not lazy, you rake a thousand bags of leaves (100 bags every year for 10 years) and clear half an acre of six foot high Canadian thistle, and haul 3 - two ton flatbed truckloads to the dump and see how much *you* "love" puttering in the yard.
Anyone else started spring cleaning? Is it a ritual for you? Or hit and miss?
I went running on Sunday. Yes, on purpose. It was a beautiful spring day, my daughter was off in Vermont with her choir tour, and my husband proposed that I go running with him instead of working out on my elliptical machine. Despite the fact that I have crappy sneakers (no need for fancy ones on the elliptical), I said yes.
I went very very slowly. But I was able to keep up my end of the conversation as my husband and I jogged through our nice, suburban neighborhood. I admit that I enjoyed it. Granted, I was a bit sore the next day, using different muscles, but it was in a good way.
After two months of health issues, I've decided to be a little more proactive in my exercise and diet. I do work out every day for half an hour on my elliptical machine and every other day I use hand weights, but running on the weekends is going to be part of my new regimen. I have a friend who did the Couch to 5Kplan and ran her first 10K recently. The plan lets you gradually get fit by running.
My husband, who writes a food blog you can visit here, has decided, too, that he wants to try to get us off processed food. He already bakes all our bread (no bread machine, just a KitchenAid mixer), and when he found out I was stopping for Dunkin' Donuts bagels every morning he decided to bake me some spice muffins with sunflower seeds and raisins instead. Two of those and a banana are now my breakfast. He also makes his own spaghetti sauce and cooks dinner every night when he gets home from work. I think I'll keep him :)
My friend Eleanor, who is a nutritionist and writes the blog Make Friends with Food, always has great tips and has taught my daughter yoga. She keeps telling me that it would be good for me, too, but folding myself up like a pretzel isn't my idea of a good time. But then again, I never thought I'd go running, either.
Considering all the talk about health care recently, it would probably be a good thing if we all started moving more and eating a little better. It's really not all that time consuming to block out 20 minutes or half an hour for exercise and to bread up some chicken and bake it instead of buying a box of chicken tenders at the store (which have way too much crap in them to make sure they don't go bad).
Just in case you forgot, there's more than one First Offender with a funny looking dog, and though Calle is a little too old for witch costumes and such, I thought I'd use today -- her 14th birthday - to give my dog some much-deserved props.
The first time I saw Calle, it was April 1996. She was huddled in the doorway of the post office in San Miguel de Allende -- a mountain town in Mexico where my husband and I were living for a year and a half. Calle was just six weeks old, more fleas than dog. She was shivering and clearly starving, but when I tried to give her a saucer of milk, she had no idea what she was supposed to do with it. I had no other choice but to call my husband and plead her case melodramatically -- She's starving. The SPCA kills dogs after two days! She'll die in about five minutes if we don't do something! (All true, BTW.) -- until he finally relented and said, "Just bring the dog home."
The idea was to clean her up, feed her and find her a good home, but we'd fallen in love with her by the time we were done with the second flea bath, and she was running around the house, ripping up important papers like any normal puppy. She was tiny and black with huge eyes and little floppy ears. We figured she'd grow to look like a black lab. But as you can see, she grew into something a lot more... uh... unique. (Calle, in case you didn't know, means "street" in Spanish. Her full name is Calle Correo -- the name of the street we found her on -- because we're clever like that.) She moved back to the states with us in '97 and has been a terrific best friend ever since, survivng such upheavals as a new baby, new cat, allergic visiting relatives, annoying birds... you name it, the dog handles it with aplomb (and a very annoying bark.)
God only knows how old 14 is in human years, but it's a lot, and she's got the gray hairs to show it. Calle is very limpy and arthritic these days, which makes me sad. But she's on some good meds, and for the most part she's a pretty happy old broad --except when the cat comes up behind her and bats her tail around. She hates that.
Happy birthday, Calle!
And now for the question: Tell me about your pets. OR Tell me what you were doing 14 years ago!
Do you have your tickets for the game this evening? I'm not sure there are any left.
You see, The Little Mermaids take on The Tiger Lillies this evening and if you don't understand just how big this game is then I would suggest you start to get out in the world and understand just how important U7 Girls Soccer in North Texas really is and maybe develop an appreciation for a game of this magnitude. There will also be Capri Suns and snacks following this titanic match-up.
The Little Mermaids are currently in their third year and sixth season of soccer. All six of those seasons have been under the direction of yours truly. We have gone from not having a clue - literally - to actually resembling a soccer team. This season, we are undefeated. 4-0. It actually looks like soccer when we play now rather than a bunch of six and seven year old girls running around waiting for Rice Krispie treats.
But tonight's game holds particular importance. We take on The Tiger Lillies.
Our arch rivals.
Well, not really. Because to be rivals we would've had to be competitive with them in previous seasons and suffice to say we have not. They have been good. We have not. Their girls run like TEN year olds, okay? They play year round, okay? They are a serious team. They have thumped us and thumped us good.
Can you smell the intensity in the air? Well if you can't then just take a look at these pictures and FEEL the intensity that is The Little Mermaids.
So tonight will be the measuring stick. Does our juggernaut continue to roll or do we get thumped again? I have no idea. But I promised my daughter I'd write about The Little Mermaids today and I try to keep my promises. An update will follow this evening. Game time is 6pm CST.
MERMAID UPDATE: Game postponed due to wet field conditions. Tiger Lillies are running scared...
Good reason for not posting yesterday. I was busy.
By "busy", I mean I was heading to Minneapolis so I could be a part of today's big WRITE OF SPRING this afternoon at Once Upon a Crime.
But before that, my wife and I decided to head over to the Guthrie Theater for a performance of Macbeth, the setting and clothing contemporized a bit (kind of a WWI sort of thing) but also full of daggers and armor. Go figure. It was a blast, man. We had front row seats, which in this theater meant we were inches from the actors, especially the ones dying and falling on the floor. We were stage level in this kinda-but-not-quite theater in the round. I really thought about setting my drink on the stage many times, right next to fake debris.
Macbeth, you know, is Shakespeare noir. Guy with ambition gets in over his head thanks to a femme fatale. It's a bloody goddamn play (and these folks did a good job of making it bloody, lusty, and violent, right down to the final scene of the dead Macbeth hanging upside down from a wire, dangling like a slaughtered pig.
It made me think about how drama and films convey stories to us--inches from our faces--all immedaite and intense, full of style and body language and high volume. Or subtlety, quiet looks, and gorgeous imagery that words can't compete against.
I want to write like I'm giving a perfromance. I want it to come off the page like the front row at Macbeth. Or like the movie Bronson. Or like that Primus concert I saw in the 90's, opening for Rush and blowing them of the stage with none of the high-tech video screens or synth gizmos.
It's not about style of substance. It's about style delivering the substance.
I've seen too many readings by authors who think reading the words should be enough. So not only is their writing not a performance, but the performance of the writing isn't, either.
Let's turn it around, then. When I write, I get the music on and I groove while I'm typing. Plenty of us do. Gets us out of our own heads, because that's a dangerous place where we exact too much control of we're not careful. Overthinking when we should just see. If the sentence doesn't feel like it's doing it for me in the moment, then out it should go. I find those on revision--all the ones that feel like dead weight. And you know what most of them are? Sentences that are trying to explain something rather than let it happen. Sentences that underestimate the audience. The easy way out.
I'm still learning. I cringe when I realize I left one in.
If the words on my pages don't fill the reader's head with the waking dream John Gardner spoke about--which probably resembles a movie (or even real life)--then I think I've failed. So I'm going to try to keep failing upwards until I get it right.
So why not just write screenplays? Well, I do those, too. But to me the main centerstage show stopper is the story. The book. The prose. Screenplays always feel like a blueprint for a possible story, depending on the director and the actors and expectations of the test audiences. But a novel makes me feel like my own little indie movie producer with an unlimited credit card.
The book is gone, I'm gearing up for the next project on my plate and I can no longer put off...getting my eyes checked.
It's been two + years since my last eye exam. I first noticed the "Hey, I can't read this menu unless I hold it away from me" problem two years ago at Left Coast Crime in Denver. I thought it was an issue with my contacts. Uh-huh. In denial much, Armstrong? But I went along my merry way, working on the computer, driving, watching TV all with my glasses on, taking off my glasses to read. And if we were in public and I couldn't read a menu or a price tag, I secretly peeked either over or under the lenses when no one was looking.
I bucked up and made an eye appointment with a new eye doctor for today. I'm cringing even as I type this thinking about the dreaded "B" word -- bifocals. Makes me feel old. I know it's a frame of mind thing, I know there are plenty of types of glasses where you can't even tell someone is wearing bifocals, but my fear is really....how much worse can my eyes get? I already fork over big $$ not to have pop bottle bottom lenses. I didn't wear glasses until I was 22, and the degradation of my vision happened pretty quickly between ages 24 and 31, during my childbirthing years. This weird phenomenon is a trait that's common with my female cousins from my father's side of the family. Just another WAHOO!! thing in the genetic lottery I was fortunate enough to win.
So FOFO's, do you wear bifocals? Did it take you long to get used to them? And what makes you feel old?
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