Day Two - foxes wedding

Today, as I meditated, I noticed an unusual occurrence. There were snow flurries but the sky seemed clear and sunny. This is what we call a 'foxes wedding'. I just went and found the wiki bit on it:

Other stories tell of kitsune (foxes) marrying one another. Rain falling from a clear sky — a sunshower — is called kitsune no yomeiri or the kitsune's wedding, in reference to a folktale describing a wedding ceremony between the creatures being held during such conditions.^[62] The event is considered a good omen, but the kitsune will seek revenge on any uninvited guests.^[63]

^{So that is good news for my day. I need a good omen for today. I had a very disturbed sleep. I was anxious and restless... I couldn't stop thinking about the plot and what I'm doing. I had that anxiety that nothing was right in it - and that people who had seen it were just being kind, as anyone would be to a poor mentally unhinged person, who imagined they were a writer. I feel better now that it is morning. I've got a good start. As soon as I've posted this I will get to work. I'm glad we don't have to go anywhere, for though it looks lovely out - sunny with a dusting of snow, the man tells me everything is frozen solid. He had to heat the hen house hatch to get it open - all the birds trotted out, most impatiently, then had a look and trotted back in. The roads must be impossible. So, all in all, a good day to buckle down to it.
Here is my schedule, already revised as I have more of an idea what I'm up to now.}

Day Two

meditate
write up notes on changes I need to make - a letter to self
breakfast
manuscript work - two hours
1 page synopsis and a start on a query letter
lunch
meditate
manuscript wrk - one hour
dog walk
manuscript work - two hours


I'll check back in a few hours with an update.

Update: It is 11:30 and I've been at work for three hours. What have I done? One more chapter, notes on things that need changing and ideas I had over the course of the night and I'm looking at the STUPID one page synopsis which is so boring I could rip my own head off and throw it at the computer screen. But I won't. I'll go check out the wonderful Writer's Knowledge site (check side-bar to go there) and look up one-page synopsis and probably do one totally insane one to move me out of this stiffness.
later...

Now it is a bit after six and I am done for the day. I am up to 13 chapters - I somehow think it might get better later on as most of my big changes are front-loaded. As I write this I realize I have no idea if that is true or not. Perhaps I am simply without the ability to see anything about the thing right now. I did a one-page synopsis but it isn't quite where I want it. I walked the dog and I didn't meditate a second time. My darn back is killing me so if I do meditate it will be lying down. Walking was NO fun as every pebble is coated in ice so it was treacherous walking. Hey! I sound like  big fat complainer. I am still loving this process - I'm simply tired of my own mind right now. So I'll be leaving you now...

Day One of Retreat

I have decided as part of my carrot or stick (not sure which) to post my goals here and let you know as the retreat wheels on where I am with them.

notes:  I will be interspersing all my work with walking and meditating. When I'm doing either I consider it part of the work but am only counting desk time as part of the seven hours.

Day One
Checking in at quarter to two!

Checking in at five pm!
Meditate   did this before coming to office
Prepare office - clean up that which doesn't pertain, put up visual board of images and words, find supplies (markers, poster board, reference books for this project, etc...) - yep, not perfect but good enough and I have an inspiration board up on the wall with NOTHING on it... ha!  Took some time to put images on my visual board - prairie scenes, a photo of a woman that seems to look like my protagonist, hawks, pow wow picture- it is helpful.
Breakfast - check
Mind Map of structure - mostly did this in preparing my office - a big mind map of the hero's journey - easy because of all the work I'd done on this notion
Start manuscript work (making changes both large and small) - this may be where I get into trouble! I've finished two of my 51 chapters. aaack. I need to get to ten a day if I'm to be completely finished by the end of Wednesday. Now, I may be spending longer on the first two chapters because other than the contest - no one will see the rest of it unless they ask for more, and realistically I know that will be quite a ways down the path. So, I am going to continue with my plan and not just keep picking away like I want to. I'm going to go up and meditate now and then get to my four page synopsis. The dog will not be walked as it is pissing down.
Lunch - reheated Borcht. yum...
Meditate  - another small stint
Work on 4 page synopsis - hour -worked on this - seems to be getting near done.
Walk dog nope, it is raining buckets, he is sleeping...
2 hours manuscript work - I would say I've done more than two hours. I've got five chapters done. Would like to do at least two more before I call it a day. That leaves me a bit behind but hey! I can't seem to zoom through it just hitting the main points. I have to revise as I wrote, ponderously from one chapter to the next. OK.
meditate


I'll post here from time to time today to let you (and mainly me) know where I've gotten to.
Later....
Maybe Later or maybe tomorrow!

My last report of the day - it is nearly seven PM and I am pooped! The man is making a steak dinner, I'll have some wine, we'll watch some Holmes and Watson, and I'll hit the hay earlier than later. I did six chapters and I've probably cut the manuscript by a thousand words. It is still near 85 thou and my aim is to get it to 80. I think that'll be fairly easy. I seem to have zero tolerance for anything the least bit off the plot - think that is because of all the structure-thinking I've been doing the past few weeks. I know what the plot is exactly now and any meanders are simply irritating.  So, although I've only gotten a tenth of the way through, I feel confident that I can do this. I will be able to have a package ready for the four agents and if I don't have the entire manuscript done by the fifth day - I still have fifteen days to get it done.I'll have enough momentum to do so.
Later dudes. I'm going up to do my last meditation for the day...

An In-House Writing Retreat

Those of you who might read this know that I've been trying to get my final final revision done and my query package for True. At the same time life is happening. I've been quite busy at work and when I've got clients I really want to see them for thin days could be ahead. I was fretting about these two things - the fact that I thought I'd have a tonne of time in January and February to write and I don't - and the loveliness of having some dough coming in. This week I'm seeing about twelve clients and have a three hour supervision. So that's about 16 clients worth. A GREAT week!
On Sunday, when I looked at my book I was happy and freaked. Most of my deadlines are ones that I impose - moving them about is annoying but truly no big deal - so I put off  fame and fortune for a month or so? But one of the deadlines for my manuscript is not self-imposed. It is a submission to a contest and it requires the whole meghilla! The complete manuscript, bio, longish synopsis and a few questions answered that pertain to the contest. The deadline is in 21 days.
My reasoning is if I have to have ALL of that out the door in three weeks - might as well have the other four submission packages ready too. For them it will be various lengths of synopsis - let's say if I have a four pager and a one pager I think I'll be covered, between the first four and the first ten pages of the novel, and a good query letter etc...
All this to say that I carved out a five day writing marathon for myself. I am only taking two days off from seeing clients (Monday and Wednesday) Tuesday is a writing day anywho and I'll start this Saturday. I think I can work up to seven hours a day - so that would be 35 hours of work - the bulk of which, I think, will be on some changes I'm making to the manuscript itself. I have them well in hand - met with my editor and she gave me some she'd like to see and I talked over a few I was thinking of. Some of these are minute (find all sentences beginning with 'And' and destroy), some are middling (slash and burn a few info dump scenes) and some are huge (change a major plot point).
My intuition tells me that the best way to go about this is to move between the revision and the writing the package bits. The work I've been doing on the synopsis is what led me to get that I needed to make some changes still. (thank you Alexandra Sokoloff at Dark Salon for your Hero's Journey Structure Cheat Sheet) .

To get ready for this I've cleared my decks, promised the lad if I did my hours I'd be free to watch Holmes and Watson at night or help with dinner etc... but that fundamentally I'm not here. I cannot afford to go away to a snowy cottage and write in that wonderful romantic way I have at times. No, this is journeyman stuff. I have to stay here - make my office even more geared to the novel and pitter-patter fly atter.
I think I will make a big mind-map for the wall - a bit of a beat sheet and see how she all goes.  I have the copy of the manuscript my editor worked on and all the notes I've been making.
How about you and marathons? Should I carb-load to get ready? Do I have my lucky thingy? See you on the other side...

For My Dear Daddio - Life's Lover

I took this photo of Dad at the celebration of his 85th birthday...

My dad, who died a year ago on this date, was a rare bird. Try as I might to sum him up, he evades the easy category and swims out of every net I fashion to capture him. (he has done it just now - a swimming bird or a flying fish?) In this, my writing blog, I'd like to remember two of his qualities - his inventiveness and his discipline. A painting general, a lover of the works of Robert W Service, Robbie Burns, Shakespeare, Sharon Butala and Walt Kelly (creator of Pogo); a aficionado of national parks, and apple pie - Mo Morrison was known far and wide as an eclectic lover of life - in his words 'a lucky guy'.

His inventiveness was legion. When we were children and under his watch, every task became a game, and  lose its duty flavour becoming something fun. I wish I could say  it was the sheer fun of playing that caused my dad to be the inventive game-playing man he was, but no. In reflection, I believe it was because he had been a leader from a young age - a bomber pilot as he entered the twenties - he simply knew he would be more likely to get folks to work or learn if he added fun to the package. No matter - the lesson was learned, the tasks completed and all with good cheer. Now, less I paint too pretty a picture, I must tell you that he could be a picky bastard by times. To this very day, I cannot pick up a broom but I feel a tremendous wash of resentment surge through me. And so, dear reader, that lesson was 'don't pick up a broom' and I have learned it very well.

When we moved from Oakville to Ottawa in 1967 (being Air Force we moved every couple of years)  he knew it would be more difficult than usual - we three kids were all in high school and weren't so prone to packing up our old kit bags and hitting the road. We had boyfriends and girlfriends and clubs and stuff. Instead of he and my mother choosing a home, he made a game. He sat down with us and made up a tremendous list of what an ideal home would look like, with points for this or that (fireplaces, closeness to schools etc...) and then we all trooped from home to home. He made us part of the process and in those days, that was an unusual parenting technique.

Later on when he retired, his back gave him problems. He had to have surgery and afterward was to begin a habit of exercise which he never abandoned. He rode a stationary bike, which could have been such a tedious thing, but he made a great game of it. He rode around the world, mapping his route and figuring out where he was, using the radio to tell him of the weather in Revelstoke or Kathmandu. I believe he'd circumnavigated the world twice  latitudinal- fashion and once by the poles. I would phone him on a Sunday and ask where he was, "oh, thought I'd take Route 66 this time and I just saw a road runner whiz by!"

When mother died, he gave up drinking, and had some time to kill so he started going back to church, a habit he had fallen out of. He had been painting and decided to marry three of his loves - painting, writing and philosophical research. He would attend a church in the Ottawa Valley area, paint it, and write a short 'review' of his experience. He had a column carried by local newspapers for many years, called 'From the Back Pew' in which there would be a drawing of the church with his observations. He eventually published a collection of these writings and pictures, called A Month of Sundays.

He often told us that he battled insomnia with editing. He would fashion a letter to the editor and make sure it was properly punctuated etc... I have not gained his editing skills and know that he'd be on this piece with his very fine-toothed comb, tskking and sighing.

These are just a few examples of his inventiveness and they are intertwined with his discipline - how to do the right thing. He accomplished much in his time on earth and believed that there was an inherent joy in being a good person - a lucky guy. Both he and we kids were lucky when he found his second partner in life, the wonderful Stella. I think, in his dark moments, he believed that he was undeserving of the love shown to him. Perhaps as the eighth child of a family that struggled in the depression, he simply couldn't believe that there was enough to go around. I would suggest that he made his luck and showed us, his family, that we could make our luck too - with love, discipline and a little inventiveness - the world was ours.

Here is a poem by one of his favourite writers, Robert W. Service:

Heart o' the North

And when I come to the dim trail-end,
             I who have been Life's rover,
This is all I would ask, my friend,
       Over and over and over:

A little space on a stony hill
            With never another near me,
Sky o' the North that's vast and still,
               With a single star to cheer me;

Star that gleams on a moss-grey stone
                Graven by those who love me --

There would I lie alone, alone,
            With a single pine above me;

Pine that the north wind whinneys through --
            Oh, I have been Life's lover!
But there I'd lie and listen to
    Eternity passing over.

Bravado in the face of Insecurity...ha! I laugh at you silly nimbob!

Dear Ms. Morrison,

It has come to the attention of the Bureau of Risk Avoidance Maintenance that you have been feeling and expressing some measure of confidence. Agents of BRAM have heard reports that you told your writing group that you felt 'pretty good' about your writing life and that 'this was going to be your year'. We understand (through a careful analysis of your postings and visits to the mail box) that you are actively pursuing publishment of your ...ahem...writings.

We at BRAM wish to express the dangers inherent in such activity. Why if every writer took it into their heads to feel 'confident' and 'pretty good' what do you suppose might happen? It is for your own good, nay your safety, that you curb your desire to bring your writing out into the open air instead of keeping it safely locked down in a drawer or computer file where it belongs.

Counselling people to continue the healthy and SAFE practices of avoiding risk in all its forms is the mandate of BRAM. Here are the risks you will be exposed to if you continue on in this dangerous fashion:

1. You will receive rejections. This is a known fact. Very few writers put their material out to the public without suffering from some rejection.
2. That rejection may lead you to becoming despondent and you may miss important 'real' work because of it.
3. You may receive acceptances. This has been known to happen.
4. If you receive offers of publication or an agent desires to 'take you on' you may get giddy and drink foreign produced drinks such as tequila or Lagavullan.
5. Your possible acceptance may lead the public to expect more writing from you.
6. This will lead to possibly more rejection.
7. And most importantly - should you get published - people will see what you've been up to. Are you sure you want to risk that?

We here at BRAM hope you will take this warning to heart. Please go back to your hovel or attic or wherever you write and contemplate that a little insecurity now will lead to a much SAFER life. Bravado is ruinous.

Your Servant,

Ms. Edna Squelch,
BRAM secretary of warnings
   
I thought I would share this letter I got recently. What do you think? For more on the insecure writers support group visit Alex Cavanaugh and do a little blog hopping.