We Had a Gowdfish Dat Died

Tremendous thanks to all those who submitted questions in the Ask Jeeves post! I'll be answering those delightful inquiries quite soon, I hope, but I leave tomorrow for some time at the beach (YESSSSS) and shall be away for the rest of the week.  So, to tide you over until I'm gone, I present Summer Snippets.

*

“Don’t dogs usually just shake themselves dry?” Sylvia mumbled from behind her pile of towels.

“Indeed they do.  Which is why we have to dry Pumblechook because we never know where he’ll decide to shake himself.  One time he got inside the house somehow and did his drying in the living room.  Daddy’s editor was coming over that afternoon and Daddy hit the ceiling.”  Celia giggled.  “After that the absolute rule was that Pumblechook HAD to be bathed in the backyard and dried there.  We’ve all gotten really good at it-- in fact, a few summers ago Alice and Francie started a dog-washing business.  It didn’t get very many customers, but maybe that was because Francie had insisted on naming it the Toodle-Pip Poodle Dip because she thought that was cute.”

~The Rochesters

“Mark, for goodness’ sakes get down from there,” Francie shouted.  “If you fall and break your neck I’ll have to call an ambulance, and you know how I hate talking to strangers on the phone.”

~The Rochesters

Ethan has an incredible talent for waking up with a dirty face.  I’m not sure what causes it.  I mean, I do clean him before I put him to bed.  After every meal, too.  But all the same, he manages to present his bright eyed, bushy tailed self to me every morning with peanut butter or regular butter or toothpaste or who knows what smeared across his nose or forehead or even dabbed around his mouth.  Which is, of course, the area that I clean most thoroughly.  It’s infuriating and also a bit unsettling, because it makes me wonder if maybe he knows how to get out of the pack n’ play and go wandering around the flat to find himself a snack in the middle of the night.  (Hence the mess in the morning.)

I really hope not.  I was thinking I wouldn’t have to deal with random acts of eating at strange hours until he was at least thirteen or so.

 ~Jennifer

“Oh, I hate pencils.”  The lady cheerfully arranged her handbag just so on her lap and beamed at Sylvia.  “Nasty little wooden things.  I’m quite sure you could get a splinter if you hold one the wrong way.  And with my rheumatism I’m always holding things the wrong way.  Besides which, the tips break too easily.  No, give me a good old-fashioned pen any day. Not that I blame you for using a pencil of course, dear.  Young folks will have their fun.”

~The Rochesters

“We had a gowdfish dat died,” said a little girl behind Derek, taking no notice of Mrs. Hennessey.

“Miss Darlene, I have a goldfish!”  Fiona cried.

“We flushed owah gowdfish down dah potty,” continued the little girl behind Derek, inexorably.

“My grammy flushes spiders down the potty,” offered a sober-faced little girl beside Fiona.

“So does my mommy!” shouted a little boy in the back.

“Use your library voice, Brandon." Mrs. Hennessey flipped pages loudly. "Let’s read our story, okay?”

~Jennifer

Francie giggled as the screen door banged shut.  “She’s always making promises about being responsible when she’s left at home to be the oldest, and then we come home to find the laundry not done and the dishes sprouting vegetation in the sink.”

“I’m not sure who’s talking about dishes sprouting vegetation in the sink,” said Alice ominously, applying a washcloth with great gusto to certain portions of Timmy’s face.

~The Rochesters

 

Sylvia regarded the picture.  “Where’s the bear catcher?”

“He’ll be along in the next one.  We’re working on that.  You go ahead and write what they’re saying.”

“The bear, too?”

“Of course the bear, too.  That’ll be easy because you just have to write RAWR.”

Sylvia thought about this.  “How do you spell RAWR?”

Mark laid down his pencil, propped his chin on his hand and regarded Sylvia. “What kind of a school do you go to?”

~The Rochesters

Ask Jeeves

Patsy flew to the phone, delighted that no one older was available to take the privilege.   “Hello, Rochester resident?  Hi, George!  It’s Patsy!”  She always forgot that people on the other end of the phone couldn’t see you waving.  “Alice can’t talk right now, her mouth’s full, but mine isn’t.  What do you want to talk about?”

~The Rochesters

It's kinda-sorta awkward getting back into writing-blogging, you know.  I want to talk about all my projects right now but I hardly know where to begin. So... could you help me?  If I provide you with some general information about the stories I'm working on, could you be a little family of ducks and ask some questions to get me started?

Because, you know, it's so much easier to answer questions than it is to start from pure scratch and try to figure out on one's own what people want to know.  (I borrowed this idea from Jenny Freitag, by the way, and she's had great success with it so I thought why not try it myself.)  But to give you a little bit of Gen. Inf...

First of all there's The Rochesters.  This has been my mere working title for a long time now, but I'm seriously considering making it the for-reals title.  Because titles should tell readers what the story's about, and this particular story is about the Rochesters-- a big, noisy family that names pets after Dickens characters and plans birthday parties in the midst of wedding preparations and goes on picnic breakfasts without a Word of Warning and takes in an orphaned cousin for the summer.  I'm not at all sure that this title is eye-catching enough, but until/unless I can come up with a better one, it's doing very nicely.

Anyway, my goal is to finish TR's first draft by the end of August.  I'm hereby asking you all to hold me to that.   Currently it stands at about 35,500 words but I'm making some rather drastic changes to the beginning and of course intend to add quite a bit to the end as I'm not even halfway through the story.  Heehee.  I anticipate the final draft being some 85,000.  Ish.

I've blogged a good deal about the Rochesters and their quirks already, so you can check out their tag if you want a bit more to go on.  (Do ask questions, though.  Please.  It's the point of this post.  I should hate for the poor thing to go to waste.  Blog posts are people too, you know.)

Then there's the Jennifer story, so named because the main character's name is Jennifer.  I know.  I'm so original.  But hey, Jane Austen named one of her best books Emma, so I'm in good company.  (No, I am mistaken.  That is not good company; that is the best.)  This is one of my first forays into the world of contemporary stories, and I'm feeling quite liberated as I piddle with it.  No need for historical research or attempts at accuracy in the dialogue... nope, these characters live and work and recreate (that's the verb form of recreation, right?  Right?) much as I do.  Except that my main character's circumstances are quite different from mine.

In brief, Jennifer Farnham's parents were tragically killed in a car accident when she was nineteen (my MC's seem to have a running theme of dead parents... I hope that doesn't indicate something bad about me) and she was left with the responsibility of caring for her three-year-old brother Ethan.  Foregoing college plans and balancing a part-time job, keeping the rent paid at a tiny apartment and potty training a precocious toddler would keep her busy enough, but on top of it all she has to deal with her worldly and unsympathetic grandmother, who would like nothing more than to take over Jennifer's life and be in charge of both her and Ethan.   Yay, I have now succeeded in sounding exactly like the back of a cheesy Hallmark DVD.  Score.

Oh, and then we throw in a young married couple who take Jennifer and Ethan under their wings, so to speak, and the guy Jennifer had a crush on in tenth grade who is suddenly back in her life again, and an elderly lady from church with a tongue like a metal spatula (it's like a knife, only not quite as sharp, and it often accompanies cake) and you have a story that I'm having way too much fun with.  In my head, that is.  The amount that I actually have written is sad and pathetic and humiliating.  I'm working on that.  And my plans for August pretty much solely revolve around TR anyway, so I doubt I'll do much work on Jennifer and her crowd, but she's always at the back of my mind and will be waiting for me come September.  So ask questions about her, too.

And of course anything else you might like to know.
Please?
Help me?
You're the bestest.
Thank you.

Where do we go from here?

*resists breaking into You Must Love Me*

I rather feel as if I'm beginning a whole new blogging journey today... it's been so long since I've been on here that it's almost like a brand-new blog.  You can just picture me being Chauvelin in a long beard saying that I have no memory of this place.

Guilt is the main reason I haven't been on here.  It doesn't stem from my lack of blogging--though if I had more of a conscience in that respect, it would--but from my lack of writing in general.  Reading others' writing blogs has only served to increase the feeling of shame.  I'd been about ready to trash all my documents and go hide under my bed until any and all writerly feelings had passed me by.

That is, if my bed were high enough off the ground to actually hide under.  Which it isn't.  I can fit shirt boxes under there and that's about it.

I think every writer struggles with self-doubt from time to time.  You can't cure it by grinning cheesily at yourself in the mirror and telling yourself to hold your chin up and just keep swimming.  I know, because I've tried that.  You can't cure it by reading other people's writing blogs or manuscripts and hoping you'll absorb some of their inspiration by osmosis.  Trust me on that one, too.  That one in particular will only make your symptoms worse.

So what's the cure for that feeling of inadequacy where writing is concerned?

To be honest, I don't think there really is one.  I don't think any writer will ever arrive at the place where he or she can sit back and say, "Yes, good, I am now the best writer I could ever be and I will never doubt myself or lose inspiration or be unable to think of anything to say ever again--goodness, look at the time, I better go feed my unicorn."  I mean, that would be a ridiculous thing to say.  Unicorns don't even exist.

But though you may never conquer writer's block, there comes a time when you realize you simply can't give up.  Or at least, that's how it was for me.

I kinda wanted to give up.  A part of me wanted to say, "You know what, I'm no good at this balderdash and I'm going to push it away for good and find a new hobby.  Besides, I don't really have time to write anyway."   And yet a bigger part of me wouldn't let myself do that.  Because like it or not, words are in my blood.  (Or in my brain, anyway.  That sounds less weird.)  I can't escape from writing.  Every thought, every emotion has to be formed into a sentence before I can let it go.  Sheesh, I narrate my own actions in my head.  In third person, no less.  Everything I do and see and feel and hear points back to writing somehow-- whether it's giving me an idea for a character or providing a snippet of dialogue or posing a plot question or just making me want to put it into words for no reason at all.

I can't escape writing.
I don't want to.

I can't rid myself of the dragons that say You'll Never Be One Of Them.  ("Them," of course, refers to the literary giants such as Jane Austen and her ilk.)  But I don't have to listen to them.  At least not all the time.  I can't always write what I want to write.  I can't always move past guilt and writer's block and lack of inspiration.  But I can be a writer.  I can put words on a page.  Those words can stink, but they're still words, and each one that I type brings me a little closer to a finished book.

So here I am, back again, taking on the world with my laptop keyboard.  I feel pretty invincible right now.  It all seems new again... and I have plots and peoples calling my name.  

I don't know how I possibly managed to desert them for so long.

Random Snippets from Who Knows When

I haven't done Snippets of a Story since... erm... November.  Cough.  And the fact is embarrassing me just a little. So we won't call these snippets after any particular month--we'll just pretend there are more of them all around, because more snippets would mean I'd been writing more, which would be a nice thing if it were true.

Oh, and everything's from The Rochesters.  Pet project, you know.

“Silence, minions!” Mark shrieked.  “The almighty, the immortal, the legendary crooner Mighty Lord Bing of the Crosby has deigned to grace our humble radio with his illustrious presence.  Fall on your kneeeeeees and hear the angel voice--”

Francie threw an afghan over his head.  “Will you just be quiet and let us listen?”

“Thursday night is game night if everyone’s not busy, usually.”  Celia jammed a large pot into a small one, attempted to shut the cabinet door and, failing, resorted to leaning on it.  “We draw straws to see who gets to pick the games.”

“What kind of games do you play?” asked Sylvia, who was sedately attending to the cutlery drawer.  

“Oh, all kinds.  Sometimes board games, sometimes party games.  Mark almost always picks Monopoly and Francie picks charades. Nobody likes it when it’s Timmy’s turn because he always picks Uncle Wiggily, which gets old really fast, and Alice has a reputation for picking Find The Grammatical Error In This Sentence.”

Sylvia snorted.

“No, I’m not kidding.  We really did play that one time.  Mark and I did a pretty good job of faking snores by the fourth round.  I don’t think we fooled Daddy, but Alice gave up and chose What’s My Line instead.”

Francie put a bowl of egg salad on the table and stared at Celia’s eyebrows.  “What, may I ask, has happened to your face, my dear?”

“She was born that way,” said Mark.  “You’ll get used to it in time.”

Alice put her hands on her hips.  “Celia, wipe off that eyebrow pencil.  I said a little bit.  You look like Groucho Marx.”

“I was practicing my make-up for the wedding,” said Celia, aggrieved.  She put a tentative finger on one eyebrow and brought it down again smudged with black.  “And I do not either look like Groucho Marx.”

“Someone very wise once said that it is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt,” said George.  “I don’t know who originated the remark, but it must have been someone wise, because nobody quotes stupid people.”

“Don’t be so reasonable,” growled Celia.  “Of course I don’t expect them to come.  I simply intend to have the party without them.”

“How are you going to have a party without any guests?”

“There’s still us.  We make up a pretty large party ourselves.  We’ll have our party, and we’ll have fun.” The murderous look on Celia’s face indicated that fun would be had or consequences would be suffered.

[Sylvia] had tried her hardest not to cry when she first saw her reflection in the mirror—it was as if part of her head had been removed.  All of a sudden her neck seemed much longer and thinner, making her short-haired head appear as if it were sitting atop her shoulders like a giraffe’s noggin.  Added to which, Alice had twisted back some pieces on either side of her head and fastened them with barrettes in what was evidently supposed to be an attempt at softening the blow but really succeeded only in making it look as if Sylvia had giraffe horns. 

Hippety Hop

“I am not exactly sure where Francie is at present.”  Celia piled a stack of too many board games into Sylvia’s arms.   “However, there are sounds issuing from the general vicinity of the bathroom that vaguely resemble those of a howler monkey, and so I am going to summon all my psychological powers and guess that she is taking a shower.”
“I will have you know,” Francie shouted from the bathroom, “that if anyone sounds like a howler monkey in the shower in THIS house, it is CERTAINLY not me, and I might add that Que Sera, Sera is supposed to be sung in a thing called a KEY.”
“I don’t sing Que Sera, Sera in the shower.  You do,” Celia hollered back.  “Put some clothes on and help us with… um… things.”
“What things?”
“You know, THINGS!” Celia plopped a stack of paper plates on top of the games, causing Sylvia to stagger a bit, and ran to the bathroom door.  “FOR THE PARTY,” she added in a whisper that would have pleased any stage manager.

~The Rochesters

My darling Rachel very kindly invited me to be the next stop on the blog hop Anne Elisabeth Stengl started a few weeks ago, and I'm quite thrilled, honored and delighted to be asked!  The shebang is being called "The Next Big Thing," and as my Cozy Story, as I call it, is the next big thing for me, that's what I'll be nattering about today.

(Before you read any further, however, redirect your browser to Rachel's stop in the blog hop and go read that... she's sharing some juicy details about her tour de force, Fly Away Home!)

What is the working title of your book?

Har dee har har.  I don't actually have one.  Well, I suppose I call it The Rochesters, but... can we call it a title receiving unemployment?  Because it's not working.  Not for me.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I feel like I'm ripping off Rachel's post, but the truth is that it came from a short story I wrote a couple of years ago.  I'm not going to tell much about the short story because to be honest I'm heartily ashamed of it (isn't that the way it always goes?) but I do owe a lot to it.  :D

What genre does your book fall under?

"Gentle fiction," as they call it.  It's not quite juvenile fiction, but I'd hate to call it young adult fiction because I have a thing called a grudge against young adult fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I'm choosing to regard this question as if the movie rendition were being made fifty years ago.  Heh.  Because most of the faces I've placed with my characters are either dead or seriously too old for their parts.  Dream casting, people. Dream casting.

Julie Andrews as Sylvia Lemmins

Gregory Peck as Mr. Rochester

Claire Foy as Alice

Elinor Donahue as Francie

Emma Watson as Celia

Some random kid whose face is fuzzy in my brain as Mark (in other words, haven't found him yet)

Ronnie Howard as Timmy 

Shirley Temple (when she's not being horrid) as Patsy

Richard Beymer as George

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Orphaned Sylvia Lemmins struggles to fit in as she spends the summer with her unusual cousins in a hilarious story written by an exceedingly modest author who stinks at one-sentence synopses.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I dreamed a dream in time gone by that someday I'd get a book published through an agency... and I think I may see what can be done about that for The Rochesters.  No promises, but I want to give it a shot.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Ain't done yet.  I'm about 40,000 words into it and not yet halfway through, so... I'm guessing the end product will be about 100,000 words.  And I've been working on it off and on since... July 2012?

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Pretty much anything by Elizabeth Enright.  Also Two are Better Than One and Louly by Carol Ryrie Brink.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

My siblings, however cheesy it may sound. We're a hilarious bunch, plain and simple, and I'm trying to communicate that humorous family dynamic in this book.

Patsy came to lunch that day with a bath towel wound in intricate formations around her curly head.  “I am Cleopatra.”
“Bow down, slaves,” said Mark.  “Darest thou to sit in the royal one’s presence?  Off with your heads.”
“If you’re Cleopatra, I’m Pharaoh.”  Timmy looked around for a headdress of his own.  “What did pharaohs wear on their heads?”
“I’m a snake,” said Mark, dropping to the floor and slithering around Alice to the feet of Cleopatra, where he gnashed his teeth and wriggled.  “Cleopatra died from a snake bite, you know.”
“Patsy, put that down.”  Francie swept Cleopatra’s headdress away and flung it over the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.  “That’s the towel I take showers with, for goodness’ sake.”
“That’s the towel Francie takes showers with,” the snake informed Timmy and Sylvia solemnly.  “I, on the other hand, take showers with soap.” 

Thanks, Rachel, for tagging me! I'm passing this on to my sister the Anne-girl at Scribblings... she's pretty close to releasing a novel and I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say about it!

Novemberish Snippety Things

I had a "Snippets of Half NaNo" post all planned. I did, really I did.  All nicely laid out, with my favorite bits chosen and organized... in my head.  And here it is almost mid-December, practically Christmas,  A STEP AWAY FROM 2013, and I'm only JUST getting around to it.

C'est la vie.

Anyways.  Snippets of The Rochesters, from November.  Nothing from December yet because I'll do that in January... besides, I've barely written anything this month.

“She doesn’t need this job, Sylvia.  She’s saving to go to beauty school and she doesn’t even have an interest in libraries.  She’s just working here to save up money so she can learn how to curl hair.  She could do that at the grocery store, for Pete’s sake.”  Celia was fuming now.

Mark snickered from the other side of the shelf. “I’ve never seen anybody curl hair at the grocery store.”

“Omelets are not uncivilized,” said Francie indignantly.  “Sylvia, did they ever serve omelets at your school?”

Sylvia, glad to be asked a question and not merely left to vegetate while everyone else did all the work, scrambled for an intelligent reply.  “Um?”

Francie plopped on the sofa beside them.  “Sylvia, where should we start?  How much do you know about the wedding and how much do you need to be filled in on?”

“Don’t say filled in on,” pleaded Alice.

Sylvia tried to remember if she had, indeed, been told anything at all about the wedding.  “I know Alice and George are getting married,” she volunteered hopefully.  “And I know from Francie’s part of the letter that the wedding’s going to be later this summer.  And… I think that’s all.”

“Goodness.”  Alice sat back against the sofa cushions.  “I really am awful at writing letters.”

“Do tell,” said Francie.

She had never seen a wedding dress up close and personal.  Even shop windows stuck an impertinent piece of glass between you and the lovely things, and most shop owners frowned upon teenage girls who came into the shops and requested permission to try on the bridal things.  She knew this for a fact because she’d watched Nancy Broderick and Claudia Willet do it once on a dare.  They had, of course, been kicked out, without an overabundance of ceremony.  

Celia thumped on the door.  “Sylvia, I hope you’re not washing your hair.”

Sylvia put her warm thoughts aside for the present and dropped her washcloth back into the sudsy water.  “No, no, I’m not.”
Did they have a rule about hair washing around here?  No one had mentioned it, and she had thought the girls’ heads all looked pretty clean. 

“What is this mysterious substance, anyway?”  Sylvia had wanted to ask since Celia had opened the evil-smelling pink bottle, but hadn’t had a chance to get a word in. 

“Yeah, what is it, anyway?” Francie inhaled a suspicious sniff.  “Celia, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Never you mind what it is.  You always make fun of me for ordering things from catalogs.” 

“This is from a catalog?  Sight unseen?  Not even recommended by the all-wise and all-knowing Janie Bassett?”  Francie pretended to swoon onto the bed.  Timmy, charmed by the idea of a new game, promptly swooned onto the floor.  

Half NaNo... The End

*coughcough it's December 5th already coughcough*

Technically this post should have appeared on Friday the 30th, but I was having a really crazy day that day... finishing the last-minute bits of the P&P95 Forever Club (a six-month project with a certain best friend that took a tremendous amount of time and of which I'm unashamedly proud) and racing to get 3500 words written so I could finish Half NaNo on time (more on that later), preparing for ten overnight guests (I kid you not) and dissolving into sobs of frustration over the waistband of a skirt I was making for my aunt that just wouldn't lie flat, only to find that I'd misunderstood the directions (I still maintain it was the stupid pattern's fault for printing confusing diagrams).  This is why I like to draft my own patterns.

So that is why I didn't get the post up until now.  Part of the reason also may be that I didn't want to admit defeat.

Yeah, defeat.

I fell 1,300 words short of my goal.  Thirteen hundred measly words.  Words I probably could have cranked out in under two hours if I had just had the time.  Which I didn't.

And yet, though I didn't make my goal, I don't feel like I failed.  This can mean one of two things-- a) that I simply refuse to admit that I couldn't do something or b) that the point of Half NaNo was more than just accomplishing 25K.

I'm going with B. Because I really did accomplish what I set out to accomplish with Half NaNo.  The Rochesters finished November at a whopping 32,256 words, which is far, far more than I would have written had I not been working under the Half NaNo threat incentive.  I learned way more about my characters.  (Even though I didn't do Beautiful People every week... cough cough ahem.)  I introduced new plot twists (one of which I'm thinking of scrapping, actually... but that's not the point).  I changed a character's name (because the old one just didn't sit right).  I wrote scenes that had been giving me trouble even just in the outline.  I wrote when I felt like it, I wrote when I didn't feel like it, I worked through a head cold and Thanksgiving and schoolwork and a computer crash.

And now, even though I didn't "win" Half NaNo, I feel pretty much invincible right now.  The feeling will pass, Lizzy, and no doubt more quickly than it should, but for now I'm enjoying it.

How'd you do?