It was my race and I honked ’cause I had to

/ Tracy Abell / 39 Comments

I just got home after running a three-mile race. I haven’t run in a month because every time I ran I got a horrific headache from sinuses plugged with pollen (my medical diagnosis). I even stopped running the trails out in the open space to avoid getting coated in yellow pollen and just ran the streets but still felt mighty shitty when I finished. And where’s the fun in that?! So for the past month I’ve focused on hooping and feeling groovy in my living room every morning.  Pollen-free!

Well, Zippy and Wildebeest ran this same race last year and planned to do it this year but then got free tickets to the Broncos game so they opted out. I didn’t think I wanted to run but yesterday my neighbor called to say she wanted to sponsor me.  Wow!  A sponsorship!  I felt very NASCAR (or something).

So I went down and signed up the race which is for  a really good cause. The Second Wind Fund was established to prevent teen suicide after four local high school students committed suicide in a nine-month period during 2001-2002.  This is serious stuff and now that I have my own hormonally-challenged teen, I figured I could stagger around a three-mile loop to support those efforts.

Oh my.

My exercise-induced asthma was so bad today that people ran alongside me asking if I was okay.  I was practically honking.  One man asked if I was all right and I gasped that I was fine, thanks, and he nodded and ran ahead.  After a few more steps, though, he stopped and turned and asked me again if I was all right.  Very kind of him, I know.  But then when the teenage girl asked and the older man asked and all those other runners ran past staring at me, I started to feel like a freak show.   With a really annoying soundtrack.

So I walked.  In a three-mile race.  I didn’t just walk once, I think I walked four different times (I can’t figure out how to get the splits off my watch and Zebu isn’t here to help).  Honking away the entire time.

When I crossed the finish line, I got a bottle of water and found an out-of-the-way place to cool down and stretch.  And I had myself a good cleansing cry.  Truly, it felt good and productive to get that frustration and embarrassment and disappointment out of my system.

HONK!

    
                                              
 

Day Six: JoNoWriMo+1.5

/ Tracy Abell / 6 Comments

Did it again. Feels good to have six days of work behind me. This disciplined approach works pretty well.

I should send Jo chocolate or maybe coffee. Didn’t she recently join the ranks of the coffee addicts? HA.

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Day Five: JoNoWriMo+1.5

/ Tracy Abell / 5 Comments

Another good day! I think today’s key to success was giving myself permission to over-write. I told myself not to worry about final word count and pacing so much as just telling the story now so that when it’s finished (remember, Tracy, the goal isn’t to agonize but to complete this book!) I can go back and slash the extra debris. This approach saved me from that horrible creeping paralysis that sends me into a complete panic each time it comes a callin’.

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I’m so grateful for Keith Olbermann

/ Tracy Abell / 6 Comments

MSNBC Countdown’s Keith Olbermann: Special Comment for 9/20/07. A stunning denunciation of Bush’s cowardice and hypocrisy. Here is an excerpt:

“…Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General’s skirts, and today you have hidden behind the skirts of ‘the last question’ at a news conference, to indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to as much as respond.

That, Sir, is not only unAmerican — it is dictatorial.

And in pimping General David Petraeus, Sir, in violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive line between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it. You did it again today, Sir, and you need to know how history will judge the line you just crossed.”

Day Four: JoNoWriMo+1.5

/ Tracy Abell / 44 Comments

The work was fine today but not so much in the way I’d anticipated. I ended up adding fewer than my 400-word goal but that’s okay for two reasons: One, my count was more than 400 yesterday and combined with today’s word count I’m still on schedule for my final goal. Two, I figured out all sorts of stuff about the story and wrote three pages of notes.

I finally know the story with G’s mother! She’s not dead! She’s alive, she’s alive!
I understand why Mr. E is such a prickly personality when he’s around T.
I realized which character is the real rat bastard of the story.

Best of all, I found some needed inspiration while reading I’M A LEBOWSKI, YOU’RE A LEBOWSKI: LIFE, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, AND WHAT HAVE YOU (a fan book written for those of us who can’t get enough of the Coen brothers’ movie). It’s not rocket science but it was the perfect time for this particular slap upside my head (plus it came from an interview with the real-life Dude who inspired the character and movie). So what is the Dude’s explanation for the cult success of THE BIG LEBOWSKI? He points out that in all great comedy the situation gets progressively worse for the character(s).

Doh.

Apparently Joel Coen writes a scene and makes it as difficult as he possibly can for the character. Then Ethan Coen rewrites it, making it worse. And then Joel makes it worse again.

Thanks. That had not occurred to me, Dude.

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Day Three: JoNoWriMo+1.5

/ Tracy Abell / 5 Comments

A pattern is emerging: First day was ugh, second was fine, third was ugh again.

According to my complex analysis, tomorrow should be another fine writing day. That is a relief. I don’t think I could take two days in a row of crying out in a fit of self-loathing as I slam all fingers onto the keyboard, momentarily sending the display into a quivering spasm of random chaos.

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Day Two: JoNoWriMo+1.5

/ Tracy Abell / 21 Comments

Today was a bit easier. A couple days ago I realized I need to compress this book’s time-line but it stressed me because I wasn’t sure how to do that. And I sure didn’t want to tackle that dilemma today when I’m trying to get in the habit of adding words every day rather than slash a couple thousand in one sitting.

So I pulled a Scarlett O’Hara and told myself I’d worry about that issue tomorrow. And then I just kind of picked a jumping off point and started writing. Those words came pretty easily. In fact, I might go add some more right now.

As of this moment, I have at least 469 more words in my story.

Hope the day was productive for you, too, my writing comrades.

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Day One: JoNoWriMo+1.5

/ Tracy Abell / 35 Comments

Made my 400-word goal. Just barely. Ugh. Hope the next 74 days aren’t filled with such insecurity and angst. I felt so adrift in the story it was unnerving but I wrote my word count and now hope for an epiphany that will keep me on track for tomorrow.

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Hooping Again

/ Tracy Abell / 14 Comments

I’m so happy because I’ve felt well enough to hoop the past two mornings.  Yesterday I was a bit tentative because I didn’t feel 100% but this morning I had such a grin on my face when I started dancing and twirling to the music.  (I’d like to bottle that feeling and take a whiff or two throughout the day so as to remember not to get stressed about the small stuff).

I’ve gotten much more coordinated than when I started but I’m still somewhat stiff and sometimes feel a bit like Frankenstein as I move about my living room.  But as I alternate between fluid movement and heavy clomping, I’m slowly internalizing one of life’s basic truths: whatever it is I’m trying to do, I’m always much more successful when I relax into it.  Which, of course, makes me think of the writing process (because don’t all roads lead there?!)   So here it is:

MY SUPER-SECRET NUMBER ONE ABSOLUTE MUST-HAVE HOOPING REVELATION:

       

        Don’t fight the hoop, don’t fight the words
Just move with it, groove with it,
And you’ll end up where you need to be.

                                            
                                 

All Over the Map

/ Tracy Abell / 97 Comments

I haven’t posted in forever despite having all sorts of stuff to say. So even though some of this deserves a post of its own, I’m settling for the mish-mash approach:

1) Finished LOUISIANA’S SONG by

[info]mountainmist

.  I’m in awe of her ability to juggle so many characters without any of them coming across as mannequins.  Lyrical writing and vivid imagery plus the ending was just perfect.  Hooray, Kerry Madden!

2)  Finished A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT by 

[info]lurban

.  Read the ending while in my parked car during a rainstorm that interrupted my son’s outdoor basketball practice.  After reading the last page I closed the book and thought, “I have to call Linda right now.”  Then I remembered that although I “know” Linda in an online capacity, I don’t know her know her, much less have her phone number.  But I just wanted to talk to her and tell her how much I loved her book.  I crack up every time I imagine “Istanbul” (Not Constantinople)” on the organ.

3)  Zebu and I started discussing the name “Bernadette” as a possible character’s name and discovered we were reading the same book.  His teacher is reading SO B. IT by Sarah Weeks to his class and I read it to myself.   Much to like in this book, including the character Bernadette.

4)  The last week held some intensely difficult parenting moments, the kind that made me wish I lived alone in a tree fort.  We’ve had some rough times over the years but this was bad in a whole new way.  Fortunately, some friends talked me through it and we’re doing better here on the home front.  May I just say that boy hormones are not much fun?

5)  My WIP is creeping along.  Not going great guns but am making slight progress and still like what I’m creating.  I’m looking forward to the discipline of[info]jonowrimo.

6)  I continue to love my hoop and all things hooping.  Days are always much brighter when I can hoop so I jump out of bed (okay, maybe it’s more of an ooze) and get dressed in the stretch pants and lycra shirt that facilitate hooping success (tight fit is key) and then hoop for thirty minutes.  I can now walk, twirl, and dance as I hoop – in both directions!  I sometimes still look a bit stiff and Frankenstein-ish as I walk about but am learning to relax.

7)  I sold my little piece to the SCBWI Bulletin.  It’s an article on exercises for crossing the mid line so as to stimulate both halves of your brain and jump-start creativity and it, of course, includes HOOPING!

8)  I wrote and submitted a short essay to a national magazine which makes me feel good because now I have a reason to watch the mailbox again.

9)  I haven’t commented on many LJs in the past week or so but have read many of them.  Sorry for not responding but sometimes I just can’t muster the energy to write anything.  The emotional turmoil I mentioned (Item 4) rendered me useless, so I apologize for dropping out of the loop.  I did appreciate escaping in to your lives, though, so thanks for letting me in.

10)  After eight years of helping feed the homeless and working poor, Wildebeest has decided he’d like to switch his volunteer efforts to cats and dogs.  We’re trying to get him set up with one of the local animal shelters.

11)  Here’s to everyone having a good week.

A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban

/ Tracy Abell / 23 Comments

I’ve got no cute socks
but I’ve got a dryer that eats socks
which leaves me with all sorts of mismatches
such as these which don’t even belong to anyone in my family
and must have been left in our house by one of the neighbor kids
even though they sorta look like our kind of sock since they’re dingy gray.

But I’m willing to reveal
my family’s sad sock reality
for a really good cause like promoting
Linda Urban’s A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT
a middle-grade novel I’ve been longing to read
and so am sharing my own version of a crooked kind of sock-related perfect.

Please share your own sock secrets
by September 1 (official release day)
and help spread the word on A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT!

Dylan Does Dylan

/ Tracy Abell / 4 Comments

I couldn’t figure out how to post two videos in one post so apologize for multiple posts. This is the companion piece to the Russ Feingold video….

For those who might never have seen (gasp!) this segment from D. A. Pennebaker’s film, “Don’t Look Back” (a documentary on Bob Dylan’s tour of England in 1965) in which Bob holds cue cards while “Subterranean Homesick Blues” plays:

Russ Feingold Does Dylan

/ Tracy Abell / 9 Comments

If only Russ Feingold would run for president. And I ain’t just saying that ’cause I’m a former Cheesehead, either! Here’s Russ doing “My President Will Be . . .”

I highly recommend checking out the Progressive Patriots Fund.

Slowly I Creep . . .

/ Tracy Abell / 15 Comments
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Not much progress since I last posted but I did go back and polish what I had thus far. So while it doesn’t look like much, what I’ve got is solid.

Plus last night I finally figured out something my brain has been struggling to sort out for the past month or so. Something to do with a secondary character and the main plot line. Anyway, I knew there was a reason why my narrator kept referring to that other character but wasn’t sure what it was. Now I know. At least for today I know.

Isn’t it a weird sensation when you can literally feel your brain tripping on something over and over, and then there’s a shift and suddenly the answer is just waiting for you to pluck it off the shelf and plunk it down on the page?!

A Finished Project

/ Tracy Abell / 20 Comments

Look at me!  Posting for the fourth day in a row!

Didn’t work on my WIP at all today.  But that’s okay because I did write today.

Inspired by

[info]katibgirl

 who yesterday finished a non-fiction article that had been hanging over her head, I decided to tackle an article for the SCBWI Bulletin.  I’d submitted one last spring which Stephen Mooser rejected with the suggestion of reworking from another angle.  So that’s what I did today.  The article isn’t lengthy or all that literary, in fact it’s probably more closely related to a blurb than anything else, but it is a finished project.  And that makes me happy.  After Zippy gives it a read, I’ll send it off.

Tomorrow I’m doing some magazine research at the library for something else I’m considering writing.  I think it will improve my mental state to finish another project or two and have them out in the world so that my focus/obsessiveness is more evenly distributed across the landscape.

Or something like that.

  

What Book Are You?

/ Tracy Abell / 20 Comments

Okay, I usually avoid these quizzes but this one appealed to me and not just because I ended up with this:


You’re Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you’re
actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their
assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they
build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You’d
be recognized as such if you weren’t always talking about talking rabbits.

When I was fifteen, my parents let me skip school one day to wait in line for Bob Dylan tickets.  He was touring for the first time in years and it was a huge deal.  I’d requested permission to camp out but the best they could do (which was still pretty cool) was let me get in line at 5:30 in the morning.  My best friend, S., and I got to the Dane County Coliseum and were amazed by the many tents and the many, many bedraggled people who’d been waiting in line for several days.  Bottles, cans, paper bags, and sleeping bodies were scattered about.  Among all that general debris was a copy of WATERSHIP DOWN.  It didn’t seem to belong to anyone so I picked it up. 

After hours of anxiously waiting and hoping, S. and I got tickets just minutes before they sold out (we felt bad for but were also grateful to the “disoriented” folks who hadn’t made it back into line).  Our excitement was temporarily dampened because our tickets were stamped “Limited Vision” and were for seats behind the stage but then we decided to just be ECSTATIC.  And when the time came, Mr. Zimmerman didn’t let us down.  He turned and played much of the night to his fans seated behind him, giving us nearly front-row seats.  The show was phenomenal.

Well, somewhere in that timeline I read and fell in love with my newly adopted copy of WATERSHIP DOWN.  And I guess after that maybe I did a lot of talking about talking rabbits because S. and other friends started calling me Bigwig (which they continued doing throughout high school).

My ticket stub is in my scrapbook.

That copy of WATERSHIP DOWN is on my bookshelf.

And S.?  He’s in my heart.

  

Seeking out the joy

/ Tracy Abell / 33 Comments
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So I’m having a tough time getting my butt in the chair so I can work on this project and I don’t know why that is. It’s actually a pretty lighthearted story with a fun voice. I guess it’s that I’m feeling a little demoralized because I’m basically writing another first draft. I finished one last November and then let it sit but when I got back to the book in May, it felt off. Not all the way off but enough off that I felt the need to tweak the perspective a bit. Not a huge amount but a little. And for some reason that little tweak makes it feel as if I’m tackling a whole new project.

Ah well. The writing life.

My point is, it’s hard getting motivated on this project. So I went back to the beginning and read what I have so far, and liked it enough to keep forging ahead a tiny bit.

Today, at least, I was able to unearth the joy that keeps me going.

It’s baack!

/ Tracy Abell / 54 Comments
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I haven’t worked on my WIP since last Friday.

I’m also doing that withdraw-from-the-world-thing which is what I do when feeling glum.

So, I’m going to start posting my word count again in hopes of re-energizing my writing PLUS keep connected with my LJ community.

Hopefully it won’t all be blue meters on my part. Maybe I can sprinkle in posts of interest. And maybe I can finish the draft of this project. Again.

Going away

/ Tracy Abell / 8 Comments

We’re loading up the car and heading south to Westcliffe where my parents spend their summers.  One sister and family plus one brother will be there, as well as other friends.  These annual mini-reunions always make for a crazy weekend but I’m good about getting away for some quiet time so I can regroup.

Wishing all of you a lovely weekend.

Be back late Sunday.

      

Writing slowly

/ Tracy Abell / 40 Comments

Sometimes it’s easy getting caught up in envy for other writers’ processes, especially the Stephen King-esque writers who hammer out manuscripts at an astonishing rate.  

Last night I found out (again) why I’m not that kind of writer.  I was feeling frustrated and anxious about the scene I was writing (or as [info]idaho_laurie so aptly put it, I felt twitchy) until I went back a few pages to where the writing felt good and then, with a running start, read to what I’d just written. 

It took a couple reads but then the problem was suddenly so obvious.  And the fix was very easy.

Now, if I’d caved into those demon voices that ridicule me for producing just hundreds of words per day, that taunt me because I’m nearing forty-five and still haven’t sold a book, that admonish me to get the lead out and produce something marketable, well, I’d either have curled up in the fetal position or started pounding the keyboard in a panicked attempt to write pages and pages just to prove I was a real writer writing a real book in a take that, demon voices! kind of way.

I’m so glad I didn’t.  I know from past experiences that it’s so much harder for me to rescue a book from tangents and mis-placed emphasis than it is to write at a slow but solid pace.

I need to remember that this fall when I participate in JoNoWriMo+1.5; a couple hundred solid words per day, every day, is a perfectly fine way to draft a book.

 

Faulkner’s Got My Back

/ Tracy Abell / 42 Comments

It’s been a hard writerly slog the past couple weeks, both mentally and emotionally, but I’m grateful for the image of William Faulkner protecting the sacred circle surrounding my WIP and me.  He’s doing a helluva job keeping those demon voices at bay.  Sure, they slip in now and again but with one well-aimed profanity, he sends them running for the hills.