Treadmill Journal: Week of August 1

Friday, August 6

1) Aug. 6, 2010. 10:33 a.m.
2) Write from 10:33 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
3) Finish the damn Prologue.
4) Ron left our workplace laptop at home, so I'm using that. Wasted 15 minutes trying to pair the wireless keyboard and mouse. Spent another 15 searching for the cord to Benny's boombox so I don't have to listen to the loudly humming refrigerator. But then I started really kicking ass: by 12:30 I had added 1,000 words to the Prologue, and by 1:30 we were finally in San Francisco!
5) Tomorrow: start Chapter 1: "This House Won't Sell."

Saturday, August 7

1) Aug. 7, 2010. 9:21 a.m.
2) Write from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m..
3) Start Chapter 1
4) Lots of spinning wheels today. Wrote a few paragraphs of Chapter 1. Started reading old blog posts to refresh my memory and read all the way back to 2005. Started searching online for old articles I wrote in Michigan and discovered another Christine Kilpatrick who runs a touring company for Twilight fans. I hope people don't think it's me. Sent emails. Wrote a long blog post on how the distractions of the Internet keep us from focusing on our tasks. Hmmm, ironic.
5) Tomorrow: Keep plugging at Chapter 1.

Treadmill Journal: Week of July 25

Sunday, July 25

1) July 25, 2010. 2:38 p.m.
2) Write while Ron and Benny are at the park.
3) Work on Prologue. We've landed in San Francisco!
4) Wasted a lot of time trying to find the right version of the Prologue. Finally found it, then decided to rewrite it to sound like a diary. So the prologue begins like this:

Sunday, July 22, 2007
5 a.m.
I’m typing this by the light of my laptop in our empty living room. I’m sitting on the floor, of course — all the furniture is gone — beside a pile of luggage and the cat carrier. Ron paces the room and Benny sits in his car seat, clutching his stuffed sheep.

I have no idea why I ever thought I wanted to relive that morning. We almost missed our flight to San Francisco because I called the night before to change our cab reservation and the idiot on the phone typed 4:30 PM. Since then, I've stuck to my vow NEVER to use Bauer again. Just working on the Prologue made me anxious and it took three cookies and a Milky Way Midnight candy bar to calm down. I managed to get us on the plane to San Francisco before Ron and Benny returned from the park.
5) Tomorrow: Work on Prologue and try to avoid an anxiety attack.

Pretty Nervous Writing Aardvarks speak out!

When we last left our intrepid contestant, she was following a bunch of goddam picky guidelines to enter the PNWA contest. Reducing an 80,000-word manuscript to a 5-page synopsis was a real trip, and I considered just mailing the thing off a major accomplishment.

Which was a good thing, because "Killer Robots Never Work" didn't make the cut as a finalist. They did, however, send along two long critiques of the synopsis and first 50 pages.

Judge No. 1 was apparently drinking heavily when he/she read my stuff, because No. 1 loved the Killer Robots, thought the writing was wonderful (blush), liked the fake explosion of Aphrodite City and called it an "entertaining, interesting and imaginative story." No. 1 had some good suggestions as well, like cutting detail out of the synopsis and easing into some of the characters and changes so that the reader can keep up. This story is about two twin sisters, and No. 1 felt that while Percy's character and motivation was immediately clear, Andie's needed more work. Grade: 87 out of 100.

Judge No. 2 seemed to like it too. No. 2 liked the synopsis and the plot, really liked the physical descriptions of the first planet, Venus, and said it was a pleasure to read. The judge also said "this is a strong storyline and would be enjoyed by the readers of this genre, especially those who enjoy stories in the style of de Lint and Asmov." (I haven't read either -- perhaps I should.) But No. 2 also wanted to understand my main character, Andie, better and said the dialogue between the twins was stiff. The most interesting criticism was that the pacing was was "a bit boringly the same," with suggestions how to vary it. Despite all the positives, No. 2 graded it 61 out of 100.

So, all in all, I'm pleased with the Pretty Nervous Aardvarks and plan to enter next year. It's always encouraging to know people will take one's weird writing somewhat seriously and not send people to your house with a butterfly net.

Treadmill Journal: Week of June 27

Well, the writing treadmill ground to a halt between May 16 to June 27. (I begin to see that the biggest benefit/drawback of this journal is that you clearly see the number of days you didn't write.)

My writing fell victim to a horrific work project involving a Color I Shall Not Name, Benny's last weeks of kindergarten and a two-week trip to Michigan. I actually hauled a ream of research in my airplane carry-on to Michigan and back, along with two military history books.

Nope, didn't touch any of it. There is no limit to the extent that people can delude themselves. The ironic part is that this memoir addresses the human tendency to make decisions based on the people we wish we were, rather than who we truly are and what we truly need.

Anyway, I trudge forward once more with today's journal entry:

Sunday, June 27

1) June 27, 2010. 2:33 p.m.
2) Write from 2:30 to 4 p.m.
3) Organize research and outlines for memoir.
4) Started well, but went downhill fast. Read over memoir notes and outlines. Read writing blogs. Searched through Writer magazines and selected a handful that addressed memoir. Looked at clock. A half-hour had passed. Found a neat Wired article on the Internet about how surfing the web wrecks your brain. Emailed the link to myself. Found neat blog about by a neurosurgeon called Dr. Grumpy. Emailed the link to myself. Remembered an interesting finance series that USA Today ran last year and found it. Emailed link to myself. Started to think that Wired was onto something. Found an old NanoWrimo novel about the Greek gods, sat on the floor and started reading it. Ron and Benny return an hour early at 3:30 p.m. and I only felt relief.
5) Tomorrow: Get to work early and work for an hour on prologue (I hope).

Friday, July 2

1) July 2, 2010. 1:44 p.m.
2) Write from 1:45 to 3:45 p.m., then pick up Benny from camp.
3) Work on Prologue. We're in the cab now, let's get to San Francisco today!
4) Wasted the first 15 minutes looking up quotes on adversity. We didn't make it to San Francisco, but at least we're on the plane.
5) Tomorrow: Get Ron, Christine and Benny to San Francisco and finish Prologue.

"Scattered Thoughts Diabolical and Immoral"

When you're struggling through distressing times, there's nothing like a smug quote on adversity to make you feel worse. Here are a few supremely unhelpful thoughts from great minds on the topic and my churlish responses:

1) "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."
— Anne Bradstreet from her 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' in 1655.

Can you imagine the moxie it must take to title your random thoughts "Meditations Divine and Moral?" If I were to choose a similar name for my memoir, I"d call it "Broodings Cranky and Self-indulgent." Did she think of the title first, and then cast around for thoughts that could live up to that title? Such pressure!

And that whole "you must suffer through winter to appreciate spring" stuff sounds ridiculous anyway. I live in San Francisco now and consider its lack of seasons a huge benefit. I don't need to shovel snow for five months to appreciate flowers. I enjoy a nice daffodil as much as anyone.

2) "Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."
— Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

I have serious problems with this quote, which looks like a fancy Renaissance way of saying "That which does not kill you only makes you stronger." Apparently if you take a nice, good person and crush her like a bundle of tarragon leaves, her virtues are supposed to shine all the stronger. I contend if you take a calm, thoughtful, nice, caring girl and give her a chronic disease, a foreclosure, some hefty medical bills and a cheating boyfriend, she won't be so nice and calm anymore. Let's add a crazy boss and a loser nephew who sleeps on her couch for three months too. I'm not saying adversity can't be a learning experience -- I think it depends on the person. If our poor Tarragon Girl was snooty, entitled and self-satisfied, obsessed with decorating her house and unsympathetic to sick people, well then a little adversity could only help. Hmm, maybe I'm proving Frank's point here after all.

Here are two adversity quotes from unknown authors:

1) "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner, neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude or the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security."

I was actually with this one, until it started going on about martyrs' "loftiness of purpose."

2) "Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with."

Yeah, yeah, we all know it's the speck of grit that makes the pearl, etc. etc.

So learn from these four quotes about adversity. Time to get off your sofa and go get crushed!

Treadmill Journal: Week of May 16

MAY 16
1) May 16, 2010. 12:05 p.m.
2) Write from noon to 3 p.m.
3) Write rough outline of memoir.
4) Wrote from 12:15 to 3:30 p.m. Slow going until I consumed a few cans of Coke and half a box of Cheezits. Finished rough outline, along with a theme and tentative title. Started weaving financial news into memoir's chronology and made it to November 2007.
5) Tomorrow: Get to work early and write for an hour. Continue weaving financial news into last four months of outline.

MAY 17
1) May 17, 2010. 3:50 p.m.
2) Get to work early and write for an hour
3) Finish weaving financial news into memoir's chronology.
4) Muni made me late, so I wrote during lunch instead. Finished weaving financial news into memoir's chronology.
5) Tomorrow: Get to work early and write for an hour. Work on Prologue.

Unearthing the Skeleton

So I got out my little literary whisk broom and started sifting through my research, hoping a skeleton of my memoir would emerge. And by golly, it has.

It's like a little misshapen skeleton in the back of a dusty museum . There's a title written on a crooked placard, some themes molded into a bony skull, and a vertebrae of 12 chapters clumsily strung together with chicken wire.

I know the final product will in no way resemble this outline. Annie Dillard said it best: "Original work fashions a form the true shape of which it discovers only as it proceeds, so so the early strokes are useless, however fine their sheen." Often, Dillard says, in revision you must throw out the best-written part, the part that was supposed to be the whole point: " the original key passage, the passage on which the rest was to hang, and from which you yourself drew the courage to begin."

So now I have a title, a theme, an outline and a 600-word beginning. They make up a rickety little scaffold that will hopefully support me while I build something better.

____________________________

Tentative title
"A Hill of Beans"

Tentative subtitle (just to make Fog City Writer crazy):
How three little people changed their lives and teetered close to bankruptcy as the country slid into recession.

Theme:
People can change their lives if they’re willing to take risks and pay the emotional, financial and professional costs.

PROLOGUE: Sneaking Out of the House.

CHAPTER 1: This House Won’t Sell.

CHAP. 2: Facing Reality.

CHAP 3: The Final Push.

CHAP 4: Welcome to San Francisco.

CHAP 5: The Lucky Streak.

CHAP 6: Devastated.

CHAP 7: The Great Pretender.

CHAP 8: The Bleak Christmas of 2007.

CHAP 9: The Short Sale.

CHAP 10: Goodbye Big Foot.

EPILOGUE: The View from Ashbury Heights.

Oh No, Now I Gotta Write It

So I've finished my preliminary research for my memoir project, which involved reading old blog entries, printing out a year's worth of NPR Marketplace highlights and digging up my 2007 planner. Yay me. Now it's time to write the darn thing.

To help me stay focused, I'm going to keep a treadmill journal, which I read about in an old issue of Writer Magazine. The article's writer compares it to running on a treadmill to train for a marathon. Each day you make five entries:

1) The date and time.
2) How long you will work.
3) What you plan to work on.
4) How it went.
5) When you will work tomorrow and for how long.

(Yeah, it's another goal list, and I'm the one who made fun of lists three months ago. Sue me.)

Anyway, here is my journal entry for today. Ron is taking Benny to a birthday party this afternoon at Golden Gate Park.

1) May 15, 2010 — 9:31 a.m.
2) Write from 2 to 5 p.m.
3) Spread out all my research and work on rough outline for memoir.
4) Started an hour late; walked all over the Inner Sunset lugging my computer and ended up working at home. Worked on themes, thought about the plot and outlined opening chapters.
5) Tomorrow: noon to 3. Finish VERY rough outline of book.

I Love You, NPR

NPR Marketplace has provided a mighty weapon for my memoir arsenal. My memoir will cover one financially and personally chaotic year of my life: April 2007-April 2008. It was one of those game-changing years that felt like a decade, and even now in 2010 it's hard to look back and make sense of it.

The personal part of the memoir is relatively simple: I'm the main character and this all happened to me and my husband and son, so I know the material. Ron and I were talking about a major day in this year, it was the day we hit bottom, absolutely bottom. It was the day we found out that we'd forgotten a credit card bill in the moving frenzy and KeyBank had jacked up the APR on a hefty balance to 29.99% (!) We're talking a $1,000 minimum payment here. I called Ron and a panic, just sobbing over the phone.

So hell yeah, I remember that day. Ron remembers that day. But I want to talk about more than the personal side of that year. I want to talk about the broad financial backdrop that this drama was played out against. This was a crucial year for the country financially as well.

During that year, I was (and still am) an avid listener of National Public Radio's "Marketplace," which is good at summarizing the business news of the day so even I can understand it a little. I remember listening to the little podcasts on the way to work, sensing that something big was coming, something that threatened to dwarf even our own troubles. But gosh, I can't remember what story played what month, etc.

But those Marketplace angels have created something that fits my needs perfectly. They have an amazing archive of every damn episode. By Date. With Transcripts. What a find! Now I have 52 Marketplace episodes at my fingertips that aired in the year I'm describing. Just beautiful.

This is on Me

So I started writing my memoir last week after some pushing and prodding from Ron and my friend Fog City Writer. Writing a memoir sounded a little daunting to me, so I approached it in my typically nerdy way with some Internet research and a few articles from my Writer magazine.

It's actually kind of fun. Truth truly is stranger than fiction, and it's easier to write about my former neighbor who sits in her garden under a camouflage-patterned banner so nobody can see her than make up a crazy-lady neighbor out of whole cloth. The world is full of weirdos, and many of them like to wander through my life.

The challenge, as I see it (and what do I know, I've only been doing this for a week) is to tease out structure and patterns out of the experiences so you're not just writing "and then this happened and then that happened and then this happened and the bird died ..." Pick a definitive time span. Find themes. Write wicked character attacks that will likely get you sued unless you change the guy's name and give him a goatee and a pet iguana. Figure out what you learned. Figure out how you changed. If you didn't learn anything and didn't change at all, pretend you did.

I'm not precisely sure what I learned or how I changed in the year that I'm memoiring (April 2007-April 2008). I'm still a little high-strung. I don't howl in frustration anymore every time I drop a piece of toast on the floor and that's gotta be a plus. I personally hate the phrase "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Adversity does not always strengthen a person; sometimes it makes said person insecure and twitchy and uptight and prone to irrational behavior even after the adverse conditions no longer exist. Ever hear of post-traumatic stress disorder, Friedrich Nietzsche? I still have problems from a whiplash injury in 1996. No, it didn't kill me, but my neck doesn't feel any stronger. It feels more vulnerable, actually.

Writing Goals

Writing Goals are cute. They're so cute you just want to pinch their little chubby cheeks.

Until you totally blow your Writing Goals. Then you just want to smack them around.

Here's a typical list of writing goals I see on the Internet:

1) A page a day min.
2) Continue notes for freaky Evil Clam of Death novel.
3) Write another scene for Son of Serpents script.
4) Continue edit of Snowball in Hell story.
5) Continue Doofuswald novel.
6) Edit You Can't Write So Give Up column for Whoreads.com.
7) Edit Shameless Rip-Off story for fanfiction.com

And that's only for a two-week period! Whoa! Over-achieve much? Now this might be a bit ridiculous coming from someone with seven equally ridiculous-sounding goals on her own blog, but you don't think I'm actually doing all that stuff, do you? Plus eat and sleep and raise my kid and talk to my husband and ... oh yeah ... work? Actually I'm only doing one ("Writing a short memoir"). The rest are there for show.

(By the way, I should point out that Goal #6 above is a column for Who reads.com, not Whore ads.com. Just to be clear.)

So maybe these Writing Goals I'm reading online are for show too. I hope so. But then I hate multitasking. I can barely type a blog post and drink a bottle of Snapple.

(Oops, I just spilled Snapple on my keyboard. dddkkkkkkkkkkke)

OK, back on topic. You'll notice that my goal list is not called "Writing Goals" but "Projects on My Mind." My writing actual goals are a bit more process-based:

1) Do one writerly thing a day. Writerly things are defined as reading my writer mag, reading writer blogs, posting a writer blog post, sending out a query or contest entry or — gasp! — actually writing something.
2) Go write in a cafe one day a week.
3) Set up a writer schedule and stick to it.
4) Work out three times a week.

Goal #4 doesn't sound like a writing goal, but it is, because if I don't work out, then sitting at my computer for any length of time gets painful and — surprise — I quit writing.

So there you go. I start out making fun of writing goals and then make some myself. But that's the kind of knee-jerk, reactionary opinion that Killer Robot readers have come to expect, even in the short lifetime of this blog.

What Next?

Well, I mailed off my entry packet to the Aardvarks and now I'll just wait. Ron has his sights set on the $600 first prize, but I will be happy receiving two critiques and a "Thanks for Playing" letter.

It's a little sad that I feel such a sense of accomplishment from mailing off a contest entry, but it's been that kind of day/week/year/writing career. Talk about lowering one's standards. But truly, the stars were not aligned (are they ever?) to help me enter this contest. My husband's broken arm, my son's birthday party and an out-of-town guest made the first six weeks of 2010 a little frantic. Then, five hours after my guest departed, I came down with a horrific cold. I managed to crawl to my workplace on Sunday and work on my synopsis and four chapters. On Monday night, Ron played Grumpy Editor and proofed my entry while I chugged NyQuil and passed out. This morning, I spent the first two hours at work putting together the damn picky little packet. So there.

What next? Well, I'm going to put Killer Robots aside for a time and work on some nonfiction. I'd like to develop a short memoir about our move to San Francisco. One of the good things about having a life-changing, mind-scalding experience is getting a good story out of it. It's also supposed to build character, but I have doubts. In my experience, traumatic events don't build people's character -- they just make people twitchy and paranoid and prone to muttering in the subway.

Pretty Nervous Writing Aardvarks

Today I'm indulging in time theft at work, putting together my entry to the good folks of the PNWA, the Pretty Nervous Writing Aardvarks. They are a picky picky picky bunch. Next year, they'll want the entries notarized, with an 8X10 glossy and a urine sample.

So I'm banging out a 5-page synopsis of my novel and trying to produce Word documents with the appropriate information in the corners. (But NOT my name. The Aardvarks are very serious about this. Throughout the guidelines they repeat do NOT put your name on your manuscript. Do NOT put your name on your manuscript. Dear God and for the sake of all that is holy, DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME ON YOUR MANUSCRIPT. Now I'm scared to death.)

I'm also flirting with disaster since the packets must be received by Feb. 19 and because of President's Day I can't mail the thing until Tuesday. And so my literary ambitions are at the mercy of the U.S. Postal Service, which hopefully won't take more than four days to send a big envelope to Washington state.

The Killer Contest Robot

The Killer Contest Robot has rolled into the room and will only be appeased by a double-spaced contest submission. Thankfully, I have a contest to enter, thanks to Fog City Writer.

Now $50 seems like a hefty chunk of change, but somebody has to keep the Pacific Northwest Writers Association in whiskey and toner cartridges. Every entry receives two critiques, probably a nice "Thank you for playing but killer robots creep us out" note. If you win, you get to wear a ribbon at their conference in Seattle. Woweee.

This contest accepts entries in a dozen categories, including short memoir. I probably won't finish it in time for this contest, but I'm thinking of writing a short memoir of our move to San Francisco. Memoirs seem to be hot these days, the more traumatic the better. Not to minimize anybody's bone-deep suffering or anything, but I'm still having flashbacks to that frantic day we left our house in Michigan. Shiver.

Beep Beep, Here I Come

Welcome. Against my better judgment, I've begun a writer blog. Lucky you.

Experts say if you want to be taken seriously as a writer, you have to have a blog. Frankly, I think the best way to be taken seriously as a writer is to write something good. If your writing is dull, then I don't care how many comments you get on your latest love letter to your muse, your writing is still dull.

I also fret that starting a writer blog will leave less time available for — you guessed it — actual writing. In fact, I worry that by starting a writing blog, not only am I compromising my own writing time, but the writing time of other writers who should be writing instead of reading my blog. It's a vicious blog-write-read-write-blog circle and it will lead to tears, I know it.

So why am I blogging then? Certainly not so I can take my writing more seriously. I already take it seriously enough, which might surprise anyone who's actually read my work. My characters are often odd and eccentric, if not hopelessly loony, and my situations stretch credibility.

Instead, this blog is about organization. Organizing my projects, my priorities and my thoughts. Right now I'm juggling half-a-dozen writing projects in various stages of completion. I don't have problems coming up with ideas — my brain's lousy with ideas — but turning those ideas into completed works.

But this brings me perilously close to writing a Serious Writer Blog, and the world doesn't need another one of those. Next thing you know, I'll be debating fonts and who wants that?

Cue the Killer Robots. The blog's name comes from my first (and still unpublished) novel, a science fiction story. Every time I was stuck in the plot, I added a few killer robots to shake things up — with odd results. But I maintain that every story needs a killer robot. Life is hard enough without taking your writing seriously.