Monday Moans: “Monday, Monday . . .”

Easy as A, B, C . . . from BB

“Oh, Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be . . .” The old Mamas and Papas song is floating through my head, yet I feel rudderless today. With my usual huge push at the end (though I did manage to spread it out a little farther than usual) I completed my 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) well before midnight November 30. Make that 52,000 plus!

And today is Monday. Today begins December. And I feel rudderless.

No more mad dash to make up the 20,000+ words I’m still missing. No more spending hours and hours hunched over my keyboard. Every. Single. Day.

No more shoving all things aside until “after November”!

Oh, I know. I could get right to work cleaning up the dreaded first draft. I could bring the story to a more satisfying conclusion (as it stands, it’s only the first half of the story. Or maybe not even quite that).

I could finally balance my check book.

I could work on the editing I promised a friend.

I could polish and send out the article I’ve written in hopes Writer’s Market or The Writer would publish it . . . it’s that good.

I could clean the kitchen.

I could finish the laundry.

I could read all the old newspapers I’ve put aside throughout November to read when “I have the time”.

But when you’re rudderless, you can’t tell which way to go. Well, you can, because you see all the possibilities you’ve been passing up. And you don’t know which way to go.

It all makes me think of the Lady Astor quotation: “Years ago I thought old age would be dreadful, because I would not be able to do things I would want to do. Now I find there is nothing I want to do.”

And that’s my quandary. November’s over. I made my goal. Now it’s Monday. And December.

And there is nothing I “want to do”!

See you day-after-tomorrow for Wednesday’s WIPs!

Monday Moans: It’s About Time!

Easy as A, B, C . . . from BB

How annoying is it to wake up on Monday morning and find your whole world has been turned upside down?

I forgot to change all my clocks.

Over the whole weekend!

In the kitchen my oven and my microwave always disagree. And they change their minds: the oven is two minutes faster than the microwave; then the microwave catches up over a few days’ time and is three minutes faster than the oven.

In my bedroom, the TV doesn’t agree with the dead land‑ line clock/ radio, which I use only as a clock. The “land‑ line” is purposefully set about 3 minutes fast. The TV changes, I think, with the weather.

In the garage, the Cooper doesn’t agree with the Subaru . . . and both of them are wrong anyway. And I can’t remember how to change the one in the Subaru. You know, “my” car. And I’ve NEVER known how to change the Cooper, “his” car.

Neither bathroom has a clock. But there’s my phone. Well, “there’s” my phone, when I can find it. When I can’t, I have to find “his” phone and get him to “call” my phone‑‑‑because he’s got a smart phone and I’ve got a dumb (and lost) phone.

From “time” to “time,” I rush‑‑‑ in desperation‑‑‑ for the sun room. My FAVORITE room in the house. My “new” office, since I remarried and gave up the “extra” bedroom to be “his” office.

At LAST, I know what time it is: this is an ATOMIC clock. Whatever that means. I keep hoping I don’t get some dread skin‑ disease from it, or have one of my limbs fall off.

OK. It says 6:05. But . . . does it change automatically when we lose or gain the hour in spring and fall? I’ll have to check one of the other clocks that changes automatically. But which one (or ones???) do that?

I can’t remember.

And it did no good to check my computer which DOES change automatically: it died last night.

I forgot to plug it in.

And the battery’s totally dead.

See you day‑after‑tomorrow for Tuesday’s Tutor!

Friday Friends: Talk About Twittering!

EASY AS A, B, C . . . from BB

Taffy Earl Lovell writes a fun blog called “Taffy’s Writing”—check her out— and recently shared some information about Jaime Theler’s LDStorymakers Conference presentation on Twittering.

Really?  Twittering???

I was thinking: I already blog.

I have a web page.  (OK, we haven’t done much with it so far, but that’s about to change.)

What I want is SOME TIME TO WRITE.  You know, like NOVELS.  Like SHORT STORIES.  OK, maybe even some POEMS.  I want to do more of my own, possibly even saleable, writing.  I don’t want to “waste my time” twittering, tweeting, pinteresting, blogging, webbing!  (Well, as an author, you’ve got to do SOME of it, I guess.  But, really—twittering???)

Part of Jaime’s presentation, apparently, was convincing authors they could find people with similar interests, form good relationships with whole groups of people (like other authors?), and so on.  OK, I guess I could go for that.

Her idea about keeping up with people/events in “real” time didn’t appeal to me quite as much, but I get it.  Sort of.  Though there are few people I need to keep in touch with in “real” time, as far as I can tell.  She pointed out that Twitter was not Facebook—and there’s ANOTHER one that costs me lots of time.  And it’s not “private.”  OK.  That’s even an improvement.

However I LOVED the idea that it was NOT a place for “advertising”!  How much of my time gets swallowed up by unwanted “ads” on Facebook, on Yahoo, on Google . . . etc., etc., etc.?

My gripe?

END OF MESSAGE: YOUR 140 CHARACTERS ARE ALL USED UP

But if you’re determined to make a go of it anyway (and, yes, I’m getting more and more accustomed to the idea), give yourself a good “handle”.  I think “benschwensch” works well enough for everything else, why not this too?

Also, you can apparently include links.  That seems helpful.  You need to learn the lingo, like tweet, retweet, direct message and hashtag—things like what they are, how they’re abbreviated, and why they’re needed.

And—who knew?—you can also join twitter chats.  Seems there are some pretty good ones, aimed at more than just telling your friends you’ve got to go make the bed now, or you just left to drive over to their house.  The ones she listed look like . . . they’re all about writers and writing—cool!

Double check the times, but you might want to check out

#litchat – Mondays, MST: 2-3 p.m.
#kidlitchat – Tuesdays, MST: 7 p.m.
#ThrillerChat, Wednesdays, MST: 6 p.m.
#YALitChat, Wednesdays, MST: 7 p.m.
#bookmarket, Thursdays, MST: 12-1 p.m.
#scifichat, Fridays, MST: 12-2 p.m.

r u gonna try it?  I’m going 2 buy a smart phone now—L8R!  LOL!

See you day-after-tomorrow for “Sunday’s Snippets”

Monday Moans: Newspaper Nonsense

EASY AS A, B, C . . . from BB

In this day and age, with newspapers closing one after another all over the country, you’d think everyone who works for a newspaper agency would be trying to keep them alive.  Yes, even the “paper delivery person” (to be Politically Correct) who so faithfully delivers it to your doorway.

Yes, I still subscribe to a newspaper.  No, I don’t get it every day.  I subscribe for the “week-end,” which includes Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays (when did Friday constitute “week-end”?).  And Mondays, when there are big sales on, like for Mother’s Day, Christmas, etc.  So you’d think, as a matter of job security, my “paperperson” would be sure that I not only get my paper every day, but that it would be readable when it arrives.

We used to have a wonderful “paperperson.”  Actually, “he” was a whole family.  It looked like this to me: the oldest brother, 19 or so, drove the family vehicle.  Three to four kids would jump out both sides of said vehicle, papers in hand, run up to the doors and place the papers on the sidewalk immediately in front of each one.  They’d run back to jump in, grab more papers and jump out again, while Big Brother kept toodling very slowly down the street.  In good weather, the carefully folded paper was held together with a rubber band.  Inclement conditions?  The ubiquitous orange plastic bag cradled the contents.

I want my old “paperperson” back!  Our new “paperperson” throws the paper, willy-nilly into the bushes, the snow bank, the wet grass (with or without the plastic bag), and—occasionally—with what must be Killer Aim, to rest softly in the small cement trough which lies in front of the house just below the water spout from the roof.

Now, both the sun-room and living room doors are on the east side of the house —and are seldom used by family members, as we invariably come in from the garage on the west side of the house.  It’s not like we can see a newspaper lying out there in front of the house.  Nevertheless, when we’re expecting a paper and don’t see it outside by the doors, we generally do think to look for it: traipsing through snow, ice, heavy-duty salt crystals (in bare feet) to retrieve the lost soul.  There are times I truly consider refusing to sign up again.  I’ll even put off paying up when the subscription runs out.  But they keep delivering.  When I’m sufficiently “in arrears,” I finally pay up out of guilt.  I actually get plenty of news from the internet and TV.

But I like my paper on week-ends!

A while back, we hit a new low: we had a moment’s reprieve from winter.  It was COLD out (in mid-April!), but the sun broke through for a few moments, and I stepped out through the sun-room door, barefoot, and stepped the three or four steps to the corner of the house and another two or three steps along the front of the house.  There, adjacent to the rain “trough” at the front was a sodden, dark newspaper.

Oh, dear! I thought.  They must have—finally—realized they’d missed the right side of the house and, lazily, just tossed another copy out!

 I knew this had to be so, because I’d already been out earlier and retrieved the day’s paper.  Not wanting to leave a mess, I picked up the sodden lump, which ran water in a stream from outside and inside the orange bag.  I couldn’t even put this in with the other papers for recycling.  They’re funny about not taking wet paper in for retrieval.

Without really noticing what I had in my hand, I carefully unfolded the various sections and hung them out to dry.  Imagine my surprise, a few days later, when I looked at the date on the front, crinkled, darkened, but finally dry, page: Dec. 24!  A Monday, when I had not expected a newspaper!

I want my old paperperson back!

See you day-after-tomorrow for Wednesday’s WIPs!