Category: Personal

  • Three Times the Publishing Charm!

    I’ve been grinning a lot these days. It’s been hard not to. I had a big publishing milestone this past April when I received my first story acceptance at MetaStellar Magazine. For someone who has dreamed of being a published author since childhood, that first acceptance really is a very big deal. It comes with thoughts of, I did it! I finally did it! and a sense of unbridled joy and satisfaction that only comes when something you’ve been working at for ages finally happens.

    Header image from the MetaStellar website, which reads: MetaStellar, Speculative Fiction and Beyond

    I remember spending the summer of my 11th year trying to hit a baseball all the way across my yard from between the two peach trees to under the outer most bows of the white pine. In truth, it wasn’t a far distance, but to 11-year-old me it was grand slam material, and I wanted to be able to hit a ball that far so badly. So every day I went out and swung and hit and swung and hit until I was dripping sweat and had to stop. I remember the day the ball soared up in a high and perfect arc, came down within spitting distance of the target. I will never forget the feeling of victory, of bone deep pride and satisfaction that exploded inside of me when I saw that ball vanish into the bows of that pine tree. After weeks of swinging and coming up short over and over again I did it!

    That’s how it felt when I got that email from MetaStellar. I f**king did it.

     

    Once is a Fluke, Twice is a Stroke of Luck

    Cover of the May issue of Metaphorosis Magazine, showing a close-up of a set of wooden shelves with an assortment of items on them inclusing several large shells, some rolled up pieces of parchment paper tied with ribbons, starfish, corals, and other oceanic-themed items.Funny thing, though. A couple of weeks went by and I found myself mentally minimizing my publishing success, doubting it. Once is a fluke, I thought. Once doesn’t mean anything. But then it happened again. Another acceptance showed up in my inbox in early May, this time from  Metaphorosis Magazine. It’s been an amazing spring season. I mean, to get even one story published was amazing, but two? And so close to one another. The acceptances at least; the first one’s coming out in mid-July. I don’t yet know when the second story will be published.  Still, that little voice has been nagging at me. What if this second sale was just a stroke of dumb luck?

     

    Three Times is the Charm!

    Two weeks ago, my spouse and I went to an art opening at the Salem Art Association in Salem Massachusetts. He’s a member and had/still has art in the show. I was still glowing from news of my second story sale, but when Lover introduced me to someone and called me an “author,” I immediately felt compelled to clarify that I was a teacher, not an author. Calling myself an author felt hubristic. After all, I’d only had two stories accepted for publication, and neither of them have even come out yet. 

    Screenshot of the homepage for Uncharted Magazine: Premier Publisher of Genre FictionBut this past Tuesday I got a third acceptance email!  A cozy sci-fi story I wrote back in February is going to be published in Uncharted Magazine!! I can’t believe it. Maybe the next time my spouse introduces me to someone as an “author” I won’t feel the need to demur. 

    In the meantime, I’ve got a story I need to get back to and do some work on, then send it out on submission, see if I can ride this recent wave of publishing success. But I had to take a quick moment and share the news.

    Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing!

     

     

     

  • The Value of a Creative Writing MFA – A (sort of) IWSG post

    The Value of a Creative Writing MFA – A (sort of) IWSG post

    First Semester at A Glance
    My first semester at a glance

    In the very first post for this project way back in July of 2017, my entrance into an MFA graduate program of studies spurred the creation of this site. I’d been studying creative writing at Lesley University for just over a year at that point. Someone–I don’t remember who–suggested I start a blog.

    So, I did. I called it a project rather than a blog, though, because I don’t really understand what a blog is. Is this site a blog? It’s irrelevant, I supposed. The point was to document my journey through my MFA program.

    Which brings me to the main point for today’s entry.

    Lesley MFA graduates 2018

    I GRADUATED!!

    Holy shoot! I’m done. It’s over. No more assigned books to read, reflective papers to write, deadlines to meet. No more feedback letters to read, mentors to pester with longwinded emails that are 90% anxiety dumps and 10% legitimate questions, no more residency classes to prep for. As of this past Saturday, I am Katherine Karch, MFA.

    Thoughts are bouncing around in my noggin about the experience. Fresh, virgin, unanalyzed ideas. And they might be important, so I’m writing them here before I forget them. No doubt, I’ll be processing my MFA experience for years to come, but right now, one thought is burning brightly in my mind:

     

    What did I get out of this crazy, two-year-long journey?

    There are a few possible answers. The literal education, for one thing, was outstanding. I am definitely a more skilled writer now than when I entered the program. The daily discipline I developed over these past two years will serve me forever as I pursue a career in writing. But I think the community I got plugged into via this program might be the most important thing I gained.

    The community? I can practically hear doubters rolling their eyes (that’s how hard they’re rolling them). You want a community? Babe, that’s what Facebook groups are for. You didn’t need to pony up X dollars for a masters program to get a community.

    Hatrack River WorkshopThe Insecure Writer's Support GroupFirstly, don’t call me babe. Secondly, Facebook is a false community. So are all the thousands of other online communities that exist for writers, several of which I am a member and enjoy. The Insecure Writer’s Support Group is one. And since this is technically (although not completely) an IWSG post for the month of July, let me pause for a moment and plug that particular group. As far as online communities for writers go, it’s one of the best.  Thanks to this month’s hosts: Nicki Elson,Juneta Key,Tamara Narayan,andPatricia Lynne!The question for this month was: What are your ultimate writing goals, and how have they changed over time (if at all)? I’ll be partly answering that question later on in this post.

    NaNoWriMo and CampNaNoWriMo are two branches of another online resource. The Hatrack River Writer’s Workshop is yet another. They’re all great, but none of them is an actual community in so far as I’ve never met any of the other members in real life. The camaraderie and support I can garner from these groups is inherently limited.

    I cannot speak to other MFA in Creative Writing programs, and I cannot speak to other people’s experience in the MFA program from which I just graduated. I can only tell you that, for me, the price tag worth it. The education I received at Lesley was outstanding, but the friendships I made might be even more important to my long-term success.

    Contrary to the age-old cliché, writing is not a solitary process. Not if you want to be successful. A writer needs support from other folks, real folks they know in real life. People they can call, or have dinner with, or go to conferences with. People with whom they can stay up late talking about ridiculous things. That’s probably been true since the beginning, to be honest.

    I entered graduate school two years ago not knowing any other writers. Today, as I sit and write this overly wordy blog post, I am thinking of a long list of writers both new and established whom I can now call “friend.” A select and small group of them might be (if I’m exceedingly lucky) my friends for life. And, now that I’m no longer their student, I am going to try on the descriptor of “friend” when referencing the mentors with whom I worked–Tracey Baptiste, Mikki Knudsen, Susan Goodman, Chris Lynch, and Jason Reynolds. It feels audacious of me, but be bold, I say. They were/are amazing people, and I hope to stay in touch with them (professionally, even, if everything goes according to my evil plan, mwah-ah-ah-ah).

    A very well established and successful author who shall remain nameless told me just two nights ago that success in this industry (publishing) is as much about who you know as it is about what you know. That probably sounds very cynical, but I suspect it’s also true. Having navigated this program all the way through to the end, I am delighted to say that I am on stable ground on both fronts. My writing is better, and I know a lot more people. In knowing more people, I am significantly better positioned to achieve my ultimate goal as a writer, which is to support myself and my family by writing books. I have networking connections within the traditional publishing industry, and I have a community of people whom I know and like and trust. Folks who care about me and want to support me. Likewise, I care about them and want to support them.  That’s going to make the road to success far less jarring and  far more enjoyable.

    Graduation DayI did it. I graduated. I am a creative writing “master,” which is a little weird to write. The title “novice” would probably be more accurate. But, two days out from having received my handshake and diploma (not really, just a certificate. The diploma will arrive in the mail a month from now), I am feeling most grateful for the people I met and the relationships I forged. If anyone ever questions my choice to pay for a masters in creative writing, citing the fact that I could have learned “all that stuff” from craft books and YouTube, I will simply smile at them and give them a pacifying nod. I will never regret my choice to do this because if I hadn’t attended Lesley, I would probably never have met and become close friends with the people I did. And isn’t that what life is all about? The people we meet? The relationships we form? The communities we build? It is for me.

     

    How important are your friends for your long-term success in achieving your goals?

  • Refilling the Creative Well – A Must for All Artists

    Refilling the Creative Well – A Must for All Artists

    If you hadn’t yet realized, I’m a big fan of Julie Cameron’s book (and 12-week, self-guided course) The Artist’s Way. I took it as an interdisciplinary course my first semester in Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. It changed the way I thought about myself, about my creativity, and about the creative life in general. And one of the biggest lessons I learned in taking the class was this: creative individuals need to nurture their creative spirit by “refilling the creative well.”

    The Act of Creation is Tiring

    It is a common misconception among non-creatives and casual creatives that artists don’t “work” at what they do. From an outsider’s perspective, creation looks like play, and to some degree it is, but it is anything but casual play. It is active, and focused, and intentional, and draining.

    That last point is essential to understand. Tapping into your creative mind is tiring, though many of us don’t notice that we’re fatiguing until we’re lying face down like a stick of butter that’s been left out on the counter in August. Letting ourselves reach that point is damaging and dangerous and difficult to recover from, so how we avoid it?

    Try scheduling activities into your life that will nurture your creative spirit. Not use it, mind you. These are moments in which, as an artist, you receive rather than produce. Julie Cameron calls them “artist dates.” She advocates one per week. I agree, though I fall far from accomplishing that once-a-week schedule myself.

    An artist date is anything that lets you to take in and enjoy the external world. Go out to eat at a nice restaurant. Go for a walk in the woods. Visit the beach. See an art installation at a local museum. Attend a concert. These should be private moments when you can be alone. For me, that’s difficult because my beloved is a visual artist. We tend to bundle our artist dates, which is fine but not ideal. Doing anything with anyone else necessarily involves moments of compromise, small or large. Artist dates are supposed to be 100% about you, so my co-dates aren’t ideal, but they’re certainly better than nothing.

     

    Investing in Yourself as an Artist

    The purpose of giving yourself an Artist Date is to “refill your creative well.”

    NeuropathwaysWhether you’re a composer, a painter, a poet, or a novelist the act of creation uses energy. Literally. It also uses neurotransmitters. If you’re continually working on your art, you’re activating and reactivating the same neural networks in your brain again and again. The cells of those neural networks talk to each other via chemicals that are manufactured at night while you sleep. Over time, you can deplete your store of neurotransmitter by using them faster than you can make them.

    That’s the fatigue that sets it. The lethargy, the creative block, the depression, the doubt. You’ve been working so hard creating beautiful art that you’ve exhausted the parts of your brain involved in the process. Athletes know this as “overtraining.” They avoid it by building “off days” into their training programs. Creative folks would be wise to follow suit.

    I’m a writer, but I love the visual arts. Photographs, sculpture, painting. When I feel like my creative energies are waning, I hit up the Boston Museum of Fine Art or look for a local photography exhibit to attend. It gives me a chance to witness, take in, and be emotionally touched by what others have created without activating the pathways I use when I’m writing. Ideas enter from the outside world, not from the inside world. They get in there, bounce around in my subconscious, and mingle with my own ideas like colors swirling on the surface of a bubble.

    The creative well begins to fill once more. When I’m ready to sit back down and start producing again, all kinds of new and exciting things might emerge from having experienced the products of other artists’ creative acts.

     

    Art Festivals are Your Friend

    When is the last time you attended a local art festival? Summer is upon us, folks. It’s the high season for art associations to exhibit their members’ works.  I can’t recommend them enough as a place to go to be recharged and reinvigorated as a creative spirit.

    This past weekend, my beloved and I walked into downtown Salem and got to see some fabulous art at the Salem Artist Festival. We also listened to talented musicians perform and sparkling dancers dance. The square crackled with creative energy and positivity. I soaked it up like a sponge and found myself breathing deeper and smiling more widely on the walk home. Life was, is, good. My creative well is brimming. Check out the photos I took along the way, and if you’re local try to get down there this weekend and check it out.  You won’t be disappointed.

     

    When’s the last time you did anything to refill your creative well? What did you do? How did you feel afterward?

    Thanks for stopping by, and happy writing to you!

  • IWSG February Post – Why Write for Kids?

    IWSG February Post – Why Write for Kids?

    The Insecure Writer's Support GroupThis month’s IWSG post asks the question:

    What do you love about the genre you write in most often?

    Well, what’s not to love about children’s literature? I love writing for young audiences.  For teens in particular, but the idea of writing for children of any age thrills me.

    Before I continue, however, allow me a moment to give a shout out to this month’s most excellent hosts: Stephen Tremp, Pat Garcia, Angela Wooldridge, Victoria Marie Lees, and Madeline Mora-Summontel. Thank you all for hosting this month’s IWSG blog hop.

    Shout out finished, I’ll get on with it.

    I am currently in my fourth and final semester of a low residency MFA program in creative writing at Lesley University. The program offers six concentrations: General Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Writing for Stage and Screen, Graphic Novels, and Writing for Young People. That last one is my focus.

    I adore writing fiction for kids, specifically for teens, but broadly I just love writing for kids.

    Why Write for Kids?

    I suppose it started with my own kids.

    [Disclaimer: I don’t like sharing too many personal details about my family members on this blog. This is, after all, my blog, not theirs. They have a right to privacy, especially my children. Who knows what they’ll grow up to become? I’ve no right to start generating their digital footprint and shaping what the online algorithms think of them.]

    For this post, however, I will share the couched detail that one of my kids got off to a very rocky start with regard to learning to read, and because of a number of factors I won’t delve into, they were on the cusp of loathing reading by the time their sixth birthday rolled around.

    Can you imagine how terrifying that was for me to watch? Me, who fell in love with reading long before I had the skill to do it on my own. Me, who used books to get through difficult periods in my life. Me, who loved fictional worlds and the characters that lived in them so much that I began creating my own when I was still in elementary school. Me? Have a child who hated reading?

    There was only one thing to do. I ignored the advice of my child’s well-meaning but MCAS-driven and test-score-fearing teachers, and I did not sit my child down daily and force them to slog through the most awful, boring, black-and-white photocopied and stapled together early reader’s imaginable, struggling through tear-blurred vision to sound out the next word.   

    Instead, I read to them.

    Every night. Sometimes, for hours.  Until my voice grew hoarse and my throat began to burn.

    Map from the Hobbit
    My child loved this map, just as I did the first time I saw it!

    I sat in my one-time nursing chair at the foot of their bed and worked through The Hobbit, then the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, then all seven of the Harry Potter books, then two-and-a-half of the Inheritance Cycle books, then the Inkspell books.

     

     

     

     

    A funny thing happened during those years. Yes, it took us years to get through reading those books a bit at a time each night. My child grew older, their brain matured, their teachers worked with them during the day on the concrete skills of reading, and my child learned to love books and to love reading them.

    They’re off and running on their own now, I’m pleased to say. They read voraciously, thank Thor.

    Books for adults are all well and good. I read my fair share of them every year. Not so many since starting my MFA program, as you might imagine.

    It’s just that books for children are, and I know I’m going to ruffle a few feathers with this sweeping declaration, far more important than books for adults. I mean, it’s kind of obvious when you stop and think about it. When did you fall in love with reading? When you were a kid, probably.  Some book touched your soul, gave you the big time feels, sent shivers down your spine, and woke you up for life.

    That’s why I love writing for young people.

    What was that first book that marked your soul, by the way? (For me, it was Bridge to Terabithia.)

  • Write in the Morning to Maximize Productivity

    Write in the Morning to Maximize Productivity

    Every morning, I wake up, get the coffee beans ground, get the water heating, and then I sit down and write for an hour.  At the end of that session, I check my “session target” bar in Scrivener, and a satisfied warmth suffuses my brain.  I’ve discovered a couple of things about writing first thing in the morning. 1) It’s getting easier. 2) It seems to lead to more productive writing in the afternoon.

     

    Becoming a Morning Person

    Let Me SleepI don’t particularly enjoy getting up at 5 AM every day.  It’s a new habit I’m trying to cultivate as part of a synergistic new year resolution I made with my spouse.  Get up early, engage in some form of exercise for 20 or 30 minutes, then write for an hour.  That’s the goal, and so far I’ve succeeded with only a couple of slip-ups (one of which I fully blame on the Bombogenesis of 2018).  

    The actual getting up part of this is, slowly, getting easier for me due to some tremendous positive reinforcement (I’ll get to that later).  The exercise part of things… ummm, yeah. No.  I’m not.  I should.  But I’m not.  Do I feel bad about that?  Yep.  Am I going to build the working out part back into my morning routine?  One day, yes.  That day is not close, though.  

    Regarding physically getting up and getting my day going, though?  That’s getting easier. 

    The neuroscientists reading my blog (hey, they could be) are nodding their heads.  There’s plenty of science to back up what I’m experiencing: doing something over and over makes it easier to do.  Charles Duhigg wrote a book about it called The Power of Habit.  I haven’t read it, but I did read this NPR article: Habits: How They Form and How to Break Them that shilled for his book.  I’m glad I did because it made me realize that I’ve accidentally included something into my morning routine that’s pretty clutch when it comes to habit formation: CONCRETE AND IMMEDIATE REWARDS.

    In my earlier post, Writing is Like Baseball: You Gotta Swing for the Fences, I talked about the fact that I’m trying to write an entire first draft of a novel by April 9th.  Scrivener has allowed me to set a deadline date and a word count goal.  As I write, Scrivener calculates how many words I need to write every day to meet my deadline.  This, friends, is where I have accidentally been rewarding myself.

     

    Session Targets are My Friend

    Take a look at that picture over there on the left.Session Target Met  That green bar is pretty, isn’t it?  That was my session target bar at 4:23 PM yesterday afternoon.  Not too shabby.  I try to make sure that I’ve hit my daily word count goal before I head on home to my family after work because when I get home, writing gets really difficult.

    Anyway, I have always, always responded well to extrinsic feedback and rewards.  I’m terrible at doing things for myself, but I am great at doing them for someone (or something) else.  Scrivener is my external motivator.  I will write that session target into the green and love every minute of it. 

    If I’m slogging along in a scene and the words aren’t coming quickly and I feel tempted to just close up shop for the day and quit, I can open up that session target and get re-motivated to push for those last couple hundred words.  It works every single time.  I’m not saying the words are fabulous.  I’m just saying this feature  helps keep me writing when I might otherwise stop.

    In the mornings, I’ve been writing forward in my current novel project.  It’s only an hour, and this is right after I’ve gotten up, remember.  I’m not breaking any productivity records here.  But check it out: when 6:30 AM rolls around (I have a timer to make sure I don’t fall into the page and get lost), I open up my “Session Target” bar and have a little peek to see how I did.  

    Session Target at 6:30 AM
    The kids aren’t even up yet, and I’m halfway done!

    That sight, that glorious yellow bar reaching more than halfway across the screen, well it just makes me smile.  Seriously, I close up my computer and finish my 5:00 AM writing session feeling like a character from the LEGO Movie (everything is awesome!)  The kids aren’t even up yet, and I’m already halfway toward achieving my daily word count goal.

    If that isn’t a concrete and immediate reward, I don’t know what is.

     

    Write Earlier to Write More Later

    WriteSomething else happens when I knock off 300 to 400 words first thing.  In addition to flooding my brain with dopamine like some literary addict, I also prime my imaginative pump and set myself up for my afternoon writing session.

    All day long, I find myself thinking about my story and wanting to get back to it.  My morning session takes my project and moves it to the front burner of my mind.  Come afternoon, I’m more than ready to sit down and dive back in, and I think that those afternoon sessions are becoming more productive, too.  There’s probably some science to support that observation, but I don’t know what it is.  I could Google it, I suppose, but really, this post is eating up too much of my time already.  It’s 3:15 PM.  I’ve got an itch that needs scratching.  It’s time to knock out those remaining 332 words and fill that bar with glorious, goal-oriented green.

    This whole get-up-early-and-write thing seems to be working out for me so far.  

    Do you write in the mornings?  Have you always?  If not, would you ever give it a try?  

  • From the Heart of the Bombogenesis

    Before I dive into what “living through a Bombogenic event” felt like, allow me to begin by saying that as of this morning I failed at one of my three New Year Resolutions.  If you’re curious about which one that might be, keep reading and see if you can figure it out, or click the link to the post where I laid them out.

    I’m not proud of my failure in resolve and will power this morning, but I do at least have an excuse that (to me) feels less like an excuse and more like an explanation.  I and my family spent the day dealing with a Really Freaking Big Snow Storm.  Not blizzard of ’78 big.  I’m not making a boast that ridiculous.  I get to call it Really Freaking Big because of how it pitched my life sideways and what that felt like.

     

    How Do You Stay Warm in a House with No Insulation?

    Our house was built in the 1950’s on land that was part of a government veterans program post WW2 in which veterans were sold land for $1.00/acre.  The program was a “Hey, thanks for doing that dangerous, deadly, horribly traumatizing thing for not just your own country’s citizens but for everyone pretty much everywhere” gift from US taxpayers.  That was awesome, but in the 1950’s, insulation just wasn’t… good. 

    Imagine insulating a house by laying a piece of cotton felt between the studs and joists and then gluing a piece of aluminum foil to it.  That’s about what we’ve got.  The result is, heat bleeds out of our house at a prodigious rate. 

    We usually deal with this inconvenience by keeping our thermostat set to 55˚F,  except for first thing in the morning when we indulge in a toasty 63˚F while everyone’s getting ready for school and work.  Not so, when the Bombogenesis struck.

    The temperature over the past two weeks has been abysmally cold.  This morning, I heard a news reporter crow like a rooster that Boston was officially colder than Bismarck, North Dakota.  Also, at what point did “who’s colder” become a thing to compete over?  Anyway, we’re talking a two week period where temps regularly dipped or flat out stayed in the single digits.  If you’re someone who lives where that’s a regular occurrence and you’re scoffing, I’d ask you to pause for a moment.  Weather that cold is not a typical thing on the eastern coast of Massachusetts.  Many homes (mine included) weren’t architecturally designed for such conditions.  Freezing and bursting pipes is a genuine threat.  The easiest way to avoid that happening is to crank the heat in your home.

    Our heat-leaking home has had its thermostat set to 65˚F night and day for the past seven days. 

     

    What To Do With All That Snow And Nowhere To Put It?

    Yesterday, ten inches of snow fell on us.  It may have been more or less than that, but the wind was blowing so hard that there are bare spots in some places and giant snow drifts in other places.  Point is, a LOT of snow.

    I and the kids got a snow day, which we were all pretty stoked about.

    All of Thursday, we listened to the wind roar through the trees around our house and slam itself against our northern face.  We stood at our picture window and watched it drive sheets of snow almost parallel to the ground, so thick there were moments when we lost sight of the neighbor’s house across the street. 

    We stayed inside and sipped cocoa.  I did some writing.  The kids spent way too much time playing video games.  My beloved got down into the studio and did some photographating.  We cooked dinner and ate as a family and counted our blessings for being fortunate enough to have a warm home and plenty of food and electricity.

    But today was (and I’ll get to the “was” thing in a moment) supposed to be my first day of my fourth and (almost) final nine-day-long, on-campus residency for Lesley University’s Low Residency Masters in Creative Writing program.  Which meant we needed to get the cars dug out so I had a way to get to the train station this morning, because even if I wanted to walk the mile and a quarter to the train station, the sidewalks wouldn’t be dug out.  No way I was going to walk the narrow, snow-plowed streets.  I’d get creamed.

    The photo really doesn’t do it justice. We also had to shovel our way down our front steps to even get to the cars.

    So, after dinner, we ALL suited up and headed outside, shovels in hand and began the two-hour-long torture session of shoveling during the Bombogenesis.  Odin, let me tell you, snowflakes sting like [insert preferred curse word here] when they’re pelting your face at 50 mph… in the dark… in single digit temperatures.  I don’t usually post photos online of the areas in or around my house, but I think it will help give context to the volume of snow that we had to move and where we had to put it.

    By the time we were done, I was done.  Toast.  Not physically sore, no.  More like numb and flacid, as if my muscles had been replaced by jelly.  I was moving slow, and it was an effort.

    When the 5am alarm sounded this morning, my beloved (cut from a stronger cloth than I) rose to do our morning workout routine.  I did not.  I slept until 7am, when I was woken by the sound of the porch door being wrestled/slammed shut and someone stamping snow of their boots on the porch.  Then the kitchen door opening and closing.

    I went downstairs and learned that, during the night, plows had come by and undone most of what we’d shoveled the night before.  And by undone, I mean they put back the 3′ high by 5′ wide mound of wet, grimy street snow that had blocked our driveway entrance.  Instead of waking me and asking/demanding I help dig back out, my better half simply suited up and took care of things so that I could sleep in.  Because today was my first day of residency, and it was going to be a long day for me.  I know, I am blessed!!

    But the Bombogenesis wasn’t finished with us yet.

     

    No Insulation Plus A Ton of Snow Equals Ice Dams

    As I grabbed my cup of coffee, sipped it, and strolled past our bathroom on the way to waking up my oldest child to let them know that their school had been cancelled for a second day, I glanced out the bathroom window and beheld an icicle as thick around as a grown man’s thigh streaming down glass like a frozen mountain stream.

    Oh. My. God.

    No one ever went out yesterday with the roof rake!  Not once did it occur to me that with the heat up so high, all day long, the snow landing on the roof was melting, dripping into the metal gutter that was the same temperature as the air (9˚F) and freezing.  We probably had an ice dam the size of Fort Peck sitting on our back roof.

    I chugged my coffeed, and together I and my beloved suited back up and went back outside to deal with all the digging out we didn’t do last night.  Luckily what at first appeared to be the mother of all ice dams ended up being a gigantic cornice of wind-compressed snow.  We easily knocked off and then raked off the rest of the roof.  Thankfully, it didn’t have a lot of snow on it because the wind was so fierce during the Bombogenesis.  We shovelled a path to the basement door and cleared that out, then dug our way over to our dryer vent and cleared that out, then dug a path out to the middle of the yard so that our medium sized mutt could have a place to do his business without freezing his wiener off in snow up to his shoulders.

    I may have slept in this morning, but I still got my workout in.  Thanks mother nature. 

    Okay, potential ice dam crisis averted.  I still had just over two hours before I had to catch a train into Cambridge for my first seminar of my Residency.  How I was going to muster the physical energy needed to pick up a pen and write with it, I wasn’t sure, but I was ready.  In fact, I was excited.

     

    At Least I Had Residency To Look Forward To

    Pretty much since December 1st, I’ve been counting down the days until my (almost) final residency.  I’ve made some incredible friends through this program.  They are spread out all over the country: Texas, Las Vegas, Seattle, Georgia, West Virginia, New York City. I get to see them face-to-face just twice a year for nine days during residency.  For that reason alone, I’ve been looking forward to today.  But, the program is so much more than that.  The instructors, the seminars, the intensity of the learning process, the raw energy of being surrounded by other writers equally passionate about creative writing as I am?  It’s intoxicating.  It’s exhilarating.  It’s nerdy writing camp for grown-up’s and it’s awesome!!

    About a half hour before my train was scheduled to depart, I got an email from the director of my program stating that, because so many of the residency students and professors’ flights had been cancelled or delayed, today’s residency program had been cancelled.  We’ll be jumping into Saturday classes on time tomorrow.

    Well, Sugar Honey Iced Tea.  That certainly does suck eggs.  Glad I thought to check my email on last time before I took off.  

    Guess I’ll have to wait one extra day to see my friends again and experience the joy that is living, breathing, and eating all things devoted to the art and craft of creative writing.  I still can’t wait.

    In the meantime, since I feel I just need a few hours to recover myself, physically from lifting and throwing 15 to 25 lb loads of snow over and over again for a total of four of the past twenty-four hours, I thought I’d set up camp on my couch and blog about what it was like at my house during the Bombogenesis.

    And by the way, please don’t be fooled by that term or by the giddy meteorologists dancing around up on top of big piles of snow singing the word at you.  This Bombogenesis was just a typical New England Nor’easter with lower than typical temperatures.  New Englanders are used to crazy and sometimes difficult to deal with weather.  We deal with it.

    Did the Beast of Bombogenesis impact you?  Tell me about it in the comments.

  • Rapid Fire Book Tag

    Rapid Fire Book Tag

    I saw this book tag on K.L.M. Moore’s site and thought it was pretty cool, so here goes:

     

    1. Ebook or physical books?

    Physical book.  I do own a Kindle paper white, and I have quite a few ebooks loaded onto it, but my brain does a much better job processing, synthesizing, and remembering information when I read from a physical book than a digital screen.

    2. Paperback or hardback?

    Day-to-day reading would be paperback.  However, if I love a book, like really love a book, I’ll seek out and purchase a hardcover edition.  For example, I own not one but three copies of the Hobbit and LOTR, and one of my sets is a gorgeous illustrated hardcover edition.  Same with Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon series.  My children and I have all read that series multiple times over. 

    3. Online or in-store book shopping?

    There is something magical about a bookstore for me.  I get a little giddy when I enter one, so I prefer in-store shopping.  More specifically, I try to get my books through a small, local, independent bookseller.  

    4. Trilogies or series?

    Hmmm… this is a tough one.  I do love a good series, but not because it’s a series.  The characters must be awesome and the world has to be awesome.  I think I might actually prefer stand alone books the most.   

    5. Heroes or villains? Magneto

    Villains, all the way.  No question.  Antiheroes, too.  Not that a hero can’t be great. (I love you, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III).

    6. A book you want everyone to read?

    A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria Schwab.  Just go read it.  You’ll understand why.

    A Darker Shade of Magic7. Recommend an underrated book?

    Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer.  One of the most amazing craft books I’ve encountered.  Even if your preferred genres aren’t fantasy or science fiction, this book is worth a look-see.Wonderbook

    8. The last book you finished?

    The Last Star by Rick YanceyThe Last Star by Rick Yancey.  This is a bit of a fib.  I’m aiming to finish it up tonight.  I’ve got about 30 pages left to go.

    9. The last book you bought?

     The Scar (Bas-Lag)How to Train Your Dragon - Book 11

    In print: The Scar (Bas-Lag) by China Miéville.  Audiobook: How to Train Your Dragon, Book 11 (David Tennant narrates these books.  Enough said.)

    10. Weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?

    A parking ticket.

    11. Used books: yes or no?

    Gods, yes!  I live for the Salem book swap!!

    12. Three favourite genres?

    Young Adult (though I struggle with calling it a full-on genre), Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror.

    13. Borrow or buy?

    Both!  My house isn’t large enough to hold all the books I’d love to own.  I’m a true-blue bibliophile.  My dream home contains a library that would rival Alexandria’s.  But, given space constraints, I’m a regular patron of my local library.

    14. Characters or plot?

    Honestly, both.  I’ll admit that I enjoyed Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code despite the paper-thin characters.  I also liked Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club.  That said, if I had to pick one over the other, it would be characters.  I fell in love with Stephen King’s work for his characters, not his plots.  I’ll stick with fascinating characters through a mediocre plot.  To stay with mediocre characters, the plot has to be highly entertaining, and that doesn’t happen all that often for me.

    15. Long or short books?

    Short.  I’m a very slow reader.

    16. Long or short chapters?

    I honestly don’t think I have a preference, as long as the chapter lengths are working for the story I’m reading.

    17. Name the first 3 books you think of.

    This question should have come earlier in this list.  I’ve biased my response by listing all those others above.  

    18. Books that made you laugh or cry?

    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Bridge to Terabithia

    Bridge to Terabithia  was the first book that made me sob.  I cry every time Gandalf falls to the Balrog.  I laugh my way through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy every time I read it.  

    19. Our world or fictional worlds?

    I’m not yet convinced there’s a difference.  Currently, however, fictional worlds.

    20. Audiobooks; yes or no?

    Is this even a question?  Yes!

    21. Do you ever judge a book by it’s cover?

    All the time.  Sorry.

    22. Book to movie or TV adaptations?

    With a few notable exceptions, please, no.

    23. Movie/TV show you preferred to its book? 

    *snorts derisively* Yeah, right.

    24. Series or stand-alones?

    Stand-alones, though that doesn’t mean I don’t read series, too.

     

    Well, now you know a bit more about me.  Your turn!

  • Life! Will You Just Chill Out Already?

    Writer's BlockAaaaaaaaaarrrgh!  Life, my good man, please!  Will you just chill out already?  I mean, criminiddly, I am trying to be a writer over here!

    In all seriousness, though, I have not be getting words onto the paper of late, and it is starting to make me feel a little crazy.  There has been a whole lot of family stuff going on over the last couple of weeks.  Kid stuff.  Supporting my creative spouse stuff. Parent stuff.  Pile onto that all the scads of “extras” that my teaching gig has been throwing at me.  Then, just to see what my max lift in life is, cue my third submission deadline on October 2nd (which I only partially met).

    It was legitimately too much.  I felt like the kid who stuffed one too many peeps into her mouth and was realizing that the gooey wad of yellow sweet stuff was blocking her airway. (By the way, I’ve never actually done the peep challenge.  I’m not that dumb.  I did the chubby bunny challenge.)  So I asked for an extension on my craft essay, and my amazing mentor gave me an extra week.  Phew!  What a relief.

    Boy tries to pop a bubble
    That’s the bubble. Bursting.

    And then I looked at my calendar for that week and saw evening obligations for my teaching gig that were going to keep me on campus late into the evening for four of the five weekdays.  And school play and scouting stuff for my kids.  And PTO meetings (which I skipped).  And my writer’s group meeting (which I also skipped and felt super crappy about).  And non-negotiable visit to my MIL’s house.  And a scout-sponsored camping trip this past weekend. 

    Yep.  That week-long extension gave me just one additional functional writing day.

    But I got the draft done and got it turned in on time.  That did feel good.  A weight lifted from my mind, and I thought, “All right!  Now to get back to the fun stuff!  Back to my story.  Back to writing!”

    And then I took a look at my calendar for this week.  Science team meet on Tuesday eats up that evening. College Rec letters are due on Friday.  I have 52 trimester one indicator grades and comments due on Monday.  One of my kids has an imminent birthday coming up that we really should do something about, since, you know… parenting and stuff?

    *sigh*

    *glances wistfully at the Scrivener icon sitting neglected in a corner of the desktop.*

    I’m sure I’ll get back to you one day, WIP.

  • The NaNoWriMo Debate: Are You “For” or “Against” It?

    The NaNoWriMo Debate: Are You “For” or “Against” It?

     

    The Debate Rages On: Is NaNoWriMo a good thing or not? 

    Emotions run high when this question is asked.  Poster for National Novel Writing MonthI mean, folks get seriously heated.  Fans of NaNoWriMo start heating the tar and gathering the feathers whenever someone suggests that maybe NaNoWriMo isn’t the best thing ever.  Critics of NaNoWriMo sharpen their pen nibs in preparation to eviscerate the works produced by anyone during the event.  It’s a little crazy, to be honest.

    NaNoWriMo Explained

    Okay, let’s pause for a moment.  If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, let me explain.  No, there’s too much.  Let me sum up.  The acronym (which I’m too lazy to type yet again because of the annoy placement of capital letters) stands for National Novel Writing Month.  Folks can go to the website, create an account, announce a novel project, and then attempt to write 50,000 words of material in a single month.  That averages out to 1,667 words a day.  I won’t bore you with the history of how this international phenomenon got started.  For that story, click here.

    For or Against?

    I am FOR!

    With some qualifications.

    Poster advertising National Novel Writing MonthI agree with many others that NaNoWriMo is not a good fit for everyone.  Justin Brouckaert articulated my feelings pretty well in his guest post on the Submittable blog titled A Case Against NaNoWriMo.  Despite what the declarative title suggests, Justin is not vehemently anti-NaNo.  He just wrote a horrible piece of trash (I’m paraphrasing him) in NaNo and thought he was going to go nuts from the pressure.   

    Different people have different writing processes. 

    Some folks absolutely adore extrinsic motivators, which is pretty much exactly what NaNo is.  Other folks fold like a wet napkin in a high wind at the first sign of pressure. 

    Some writers thrive on establishing a rock-solid daily writing habit.  I like to write every day, no matter what.  (Not that I always get to do things the way I want to.  See my earlier post about my kids for more details on that front.)  Other people tend to write best when they produce work in a more accordion style, with long stretches of empty pages followed by rapid bursts of prolific words.

    Some folks are communal writers.  They love talking shop with other writers, joining up at coffee shops or in library meeting rooms to sit and write together, posting updates on all the social media platforms.  Hooray for the global connectedness that is the internet!  Other writers, though, are solitary people (when they’re creating, at least) and find the whole social, communal aspect of NaNoWriMo repellant.

    NaNoWriMo Participant Badge

    My Own Experience With NaNoWriMo

    All I can say is this: for me, there are more positives than negatives in participating. 

    For starters, participating in my very first NaNoWriMo taught me that I have the capacity for self-discipline needed to write an entire novel. 

    Also, the stamina.  I mean, people!  Writing a novel is like running a marathon.  That might be too gentle an analogy.  It’s like taking part in an Ironman competition.  I went into that first NaNoWriMo all, “Yeah!  I’m going to write a whole novel in just one month!”  Well, that’s not what happened.  I did “win” the event by writing 50,000 words in the month of November, but I was startled to discover that my book was far from finished.  I continued writing (every day, thanks to the habit I’d cultivated during November) and proudly finished up my book in March of that year.  It topped off at just over 96,000 words.  

    It was a disgusting beast of a first draft.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say it was a horrible piece of trash.  But it existed.  I’d done it.  I’d written a full draft of a novel.  If nothing else, I now knew that I had the sheer stamina necessary to write a book.  I tucked that draft away in the bottom drawer of my writing desk, where I shall probably keep it until my dying day.

    See, I think of NaNoWriMo not as a chance to pen a masterpiece, but as an opportunity to simply practice the art of writing.  It inspires me.  It excites me.  Heck, it bolstered my confidence enough join the North Shore Writer’s Group to apply to the MFA in Creative Writing program at Lesley University.  NaNoWriMo exposed me to new people and new ways of thinking and new opportunities.

    So, yes, I think NaNoWriMo is a positive force for creativity, despite what some might say.

    What do you think about NaNoWriMo?  Have you participated?  Will you again?  Why or why not?

     

  • #IWSG – Adding Personal Details to Stories?

    IWSG - The Insecure Writer's Support GroupIt’s the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means.  Or, well, maybe you don’t.  It’s #IWSG Day! The question this month is…

    Have you ever slipped any of your personal information into your characters, either by accident or on purpose?

    I sure have, but first, allow me to drop a plug for IWSG.  The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, founded by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh, is an online space where writers (insecure and otherwise) can come together to share stories, successes, struggles, and all the rest of it. The website is chock-o-block full of great stuff.  There’s a Twitter Pitch, which I haven’t checked out yet, contests, books, swag, conferences, and more.  Be sure to jump over there and check them out!

    Okay, back to the question.  I often work personal information into my writing on purpose, but sometimes I do it unintentionally, too. 

    Here’s an example of when personal stuff just sort of slips in there when I’m not paying attention. This past winter, during one of my critique sessions for my Lesley University Low-Residency master’s program, someone pointed out that my main character sounded like she was from the Midwest.  The story being workshopped was something I’d discovery written.  I hadn’t generated any character dossiers and hadn’t fleshed out a background for anyone. 

    The comment left me agape.  You see, despite the fact that was born and raised in Massachusetts and am surrounded by Bostonians with the classically difficult to imitate accent, I’ve been told multiple times that I don’t sound like I’m from the area.  In fact, people often tell me I’ve got a midwestern accent and drop midwestern slang.  I chalk that up to the my father’s influence.  He was born and raised on a farm in Iowa, and we visited his family often when I was a kid.

    Who knew my father had shaped my psyche so deeply that it was affecting my writing!  In any case, I decided to have my main character be a girl who grew up on a farm in… you guessed it, Iowa.  Why not just roll with it, right?  So now my dad is a teenage girl fighting for her life in the Canadian wilderness.  Fabulous!

    More often, personal information makes its way into my stories on purpose.  I’ve written stories that take place in my hometown, at my place of work, or that involve events I’ve lived directly.  All fictionalized to varying degrees, mind you. 

    My current WIP is a young adult SciFi horror story about a group of youths trying to survive the elements (and other things) in the backcountry of Canada.  As a teen, I was a wilderness backpacking enthusiast, and a couple of times I and my group members found ourselves in genuinely dangerous situations.  I’ve incorporated fictionalized versions of those events in my WIP.

    So, yeah, I draw on my life experiences to add authenticity to everything I write. 

    What about you?  Do you slip personal details into your writing?  How do you feel about it?