Moving Objects

Why I Can’t Take a Day Off

(This may seem hypocritical coming from someone who hasn’t updated her blog in over a month, but bear with me.)

If you’re a mom, you’ve probably heard it said, “Moms don’t get sick days,” or “Moms aren’t allowed weekends,” or my personal favorite, “Moms can’t take a day off.”

That’s so not true.

Okay, in a way it is. There are certain things a mom has to do to keep everyone, like, alive. Or happy. And if you live in a house like mine, it might as well be the apocalypse when everyone is unhappy. These beautiful little effers are demanding. Food, milk, diapers/butts wiped, teeth brushed, naps and bedtime. You know the drill of necessities.

But trust me, I can get away with doing very, very little on the mom scale on occasion. Will the dishes tower above the sink line? Sure. Will laundry become a fire hazard? Yeah. Will dog food be experimentally consumed? Rarely.

In the last five years of motherhood, I’ve prided myself in balancing work, personal goals, my marriage, and my family in above-amateur status (I’m striving for Olympic level…and don’t tell me there isn’t an Olympics for this thing, I see judges EVERYWHERE). But I proved my theory of just how little I could do as a mom a few weeks ago when I was weakened by the stomach flu and confined to the floor with little to comfort me except Mitch Album made-for-tv-movies and my blessed little angels.

(If you’re a Golden Girls fan, read the first sentence in Sofia Petrillo’s voice…)

Picture it: 2016, Austin, Texas. My husband just loaded up our moving truck with all of our earthly belongings—minus a few necessities such as blankets, clothes, and that closet in the bathroom I had yet to confine to cardboard—and hopped a plane for a weekend of job training, leaving his pregnant wife, two young daughters, and stressed out dog to embark on a cross-country move without him.

Don’t feel bad for me. I gave him my blessing to go (even if he didn’t need it), and my dear dad—whose offer to take a week off to help with the journey made him appear like a glorious hybrid of Sir Lancelot and Captain America—was due to arrive the next day.

(Unfortunately, due to an outdated policy by Delta, which should have been amended in the 1960s, my well-intentioned father’s trip was delayed by more than 24 hours. But I’ll spare you the asinine details. After all, it seemed much of my life at this point was a true comedy of errors. I could write a whole post on the hilarity of it, but honestly, I’d just assume forget and move on. Doubt I’ll ever purchase a Delta ticket again, though. Insert hand gesture.)

So, there I was, stomach spasming, a To Do list longer than my ledger of enemies, and a house that needed to be bleached for more than one reason. Instead of accomplishing anything, I ordered eight servings of egg drop soup from Mama Fu’s, curled up on a blowup mattress, turned on the tube (because I obviously hadn’t packed it yet, either), and let my girls wreak havoc.

In reflection (days later, because my brain was preoccupied with the repetitive desire not to puke again), I realized just how little I could do to keep my family alive. Cardboard boxes make great toys, as we know, and it’s apparently super fun as a kid to yell in an empty house with vaulted ceilings because the echoing acoustics are amazing. I didn’t have a headache or anything.

I also understood that I do not want to live my life like I’m perpetually on imaginary bed rest. It was fun for a hot second.

In the days that followed, I made the absolute most of each day. Not because I wanted to—though I did—but out of necessity. By the time we squeaked out of Bat City with a stomach full of last-chance Torchy’s Tacos, I crammed in as much work as humanly possible. Seriously. Not only did I have to finish packing and cleaning for the move alone, take my oldest daughter back to school for a few more days, and care for all the fun, logistical nonsense that accompanies a move, I also had a huge project for my [now previous] employer to repaint every one of the directional signs on the educational campus by hand. Both sides. I also sold numerous items on Craigslist that wouldn’t fit in the truck, handled a new case of hives that sprouted in our house following the stomach flu, jumped through a few hoops to get last-minute medical records for myself, my unborn son, and my kiddos, and even managed to visit a few dear friends and a museum I’d been meaning to view but had never quite got around to.

It was exhilarating. I fed off of the fear that I wouldn’t get it all done, knowing deep down that I would. I created a perpetuating energy within that drove my next move, increasing with each hour until a four pages of tasks was done and my body was exhausted.

There’s nothing special about me or my circumstances. We’ve all been sick. We’ve all surprised ourselves with handling manic days of overwhelming, bell-to-bell madness.

But, here’s what I noticed about the whole episode…

The energy it took to brush my teeth while sick was the same amount exerted to make twenty trips up and down two flights of stairs to load the last of our crap in the car. Granted, I was sick in the first example, but the principle is the same. It’s the whole Newton’s First Law of Motion thing. An object (please don’t comment about how I’m objectifying myself, I know I’m a human) in motion tends to stay in motion. An object at rest tends to stay at rest… UNLESS and external force is applied.

Are you at motion? Am I? If I hadn’t had the external force of a daunting move at my toes, would I have accomplished as much?

Ever notice that when you “take the morning off,” it’s hard to get anything done the rest of the day because the act of getting moving requires so much energy that you might as well wait until tomorrow? I do it all the time, and my task lists grow because of it. I also give myself forty mental lashings every time I fall into that trap, but never seem to learn.

Open any article about habits of successful people, and you’re bound to see at least one of the following:

1-    Rise early.

2-    Start working early.

3-    Get your butt up and moving.

4-    Eat your frog (tackle the task you’re dreading the most first).

5-    Work now, play later. Or play now, work harder later.

(Okay, that last one is a gem from my dad, but it holds true in terms of relevancy and sound advice.)

In said articles, you will of course also see things like “Recharge” and “Take time for yourself.” That’s a given. But as a glutton for the couch, I have to be proactive by operating on the side of accomplishment, knowing the rest will follow. Otherwise I’m all, “Seven days off in a row is good for me! I need to do absolutely nothing except breathe for as long as it takes for an external force to be applied to get me moving.”

Don’t lie. You’ve been there, too.

But the truth is that when we find what our true purpose is—our greatest passion in life—and work toward it, it is energy giving not energy draining. I wouldn’t advocate for running yourself into the ground and becoming sick from working too much. Being sick sucks a plastic hamster ball.

Know your limits, but if you aren’t stretching past them every once in a while, how will you realize what you can truly do?!

So, what am I going to do now that the chaos of moving, settling in, and starting our lives all over has ebbed? Funny you should ask, I was just making a list:

-         Make some revisions to my currently submitted book (I thought I was done, like, five times).

-         Decide between editing/rewriting a shelved book that grabbed some agent’s interest a year ago but was beyond my then-current skill level, or finishing my work in progress. It’s still beyond my skill level, but what the hey. Stretch past your limits, right?

-         Continue illustrating my picture book.

-         Help my husband to grow the small real estate business we just started in addition to his corporate job.

-         Push out my third baby (8 weeks and counting) and keep my girls adjusting and growing.

-         World domination. I haven’t decided how to accomplish this yet, so I’m going to focus on block domination—which should be easy because I live next to some golden gals—and work my way up to neighborhood. Also golden gals. I’ll rule over my Ensure-drinking minions soon.

In no uncertain terms, I just can’t stop. This object is staying in motion. Even if it gets boring or tedious or difficult or impossibly redundant and heartbreaking. I’ll make mistakes and keep moving. I’ll learn and keep moving. I’ll do better when I know better and keep moving. I don’t want to wait for an external force to catapult me into action. Even if it means letting the dishes occasionally pile above the sink. I’ll keep a firm lid on the dog food, though.

See you soon, world!

Composing Effective Prose: Part 5

Writing DOES have a secret ingredient. Want to know what it is? Read on to find out. Or cheat by skipping to the bottom, who’s gunna know?

Voice

I hope this series on prose has helped you, even in the smallest of ways. If you found one tool to help better your prose, were linked to a website you connected with, or fixed even one sentence in your WIP, I accomplished what I set out to do. And if you haven't read it all, you can read Parts 1-4 by simply locating them on the side bar or scrolling down.

Let’s wrap this up with a brief post on Voice.

A good voice is not easily cultivated. It takes year-after-year of slamming down words, figuring out what works for you, and embracing the evolutionary process that accompanies the craft. Like growing, it’s often painful, can come in spurts, and stretches you beyond your comfort zone. But growth (i.e. constant practice, struggle, and fall-on-your-ever-loving-face mistakes) is the only thing that will take you out of writing infancy and into the full maturity of your carefully voice.

Don’t give up because it gets hard. Often times, your greatest struggle leads to your greatest success. At least, I hope so. For all our sakes.

Here are some tips to help cultivate your “voice.” For more excellent advice, check out the links at the bottom of the page…

- Read. Anyone who has read more than a paragraph of my blog knows that I advocate plentiful and abundant reading. Experiencing the writing voices of accomplished writers helps to groom your own.

- Speak into a recorder. Listen to it.

- Observe your surroundings. Write what you see in the exclusive lens to which you see it.

- Stalk people in public—coffee shops, malls, restaurants, etc.—listen to how they speak to help get the voice of your conversations down. That's right, I said stalk them.

- Use vocabulary true to your characters. If you have a woman from the south, “y’all” and “Bless her heart” can be as much a part of her as any other description you give. Ditto for any part of the world. Do your research and use what you’re comfortable using.

- Read a stack of emails you’ve sent to friends, coworkers, or family members in the past, and mimic the spontaneity. This form of writing is often lively, intimate, and (most importantly) engaging.

- Paint with your words. Use the ones you love (careful not to use the same words too often) and brandish them in ways that are distinctive to you.

- Write about what you value, what makes you sick, what keeps you up at night.

- Above all, write often, daily if possible. Write even if the work will never make it into your blog, your short story, or your manuscript. Back in my tattoo artist days, I would draw and draw and draw. Very few of those ever found permanent homes on skin, but they helped me be a better artist. But, come on, you don't need someone to drill into you the importance of practice. Or, at least, you shouldn't.

Avoid the following…

- Don’t use the wrong voice and tone for the occasion or audience. Have you ever read a genre where the voice didn’t quite fit? I read a middle grade fantasy once that read very similar to a Hemmingway-esque adventure. Needless to say, I didn’t connect well with it. Choosing the correct tone requires tact and ample reading.

- Avoid using the wrong POV, tense, or both.

- Avoid using a phony tone. Why impersonate other authors when you can create your own voice?

So, what’s the “Secret to Writing?" Simple.

It’s YOU.

Write in your unique voice, write your unique thoughts and opinions, write your unique story. Out of all the six billion voices in the world, no one can write in yours except you. No pressure.

http://www.shesnovel.com/blog/find-writing-voice/

http://danielauslan.com/10-questions-will-help-unearth-unique-voice/

http://www.auntpeaches.com/2013/04/reader-question-on-writing_8.html

This has been another "'No Post on Sundays' Post"

#NoPostonSundaysPost

Composing Effective Prose: Part 4

SENTENCES

“If you hone your craft, carefully and consistently, looking always for ways to improve, your writing will sing as song lyrics and shine like a well-crafted light show,” said the teacher. “Your writing will become art.”

The student stared, unamused. “Duh.”

Once you have the components of a good sentence wrangled into compliance, you should look at the sentences themselves. 

We can write a good sentence. We can then write another. We can write another after that. And yet another to follow it. 

Or, we can use ever paintbrush in our kit, painting a story with varied brushstrokes and different colors, expanding the universe of the reader with the beauty of words.

Mix 'em up. Sentences should be varied to fit the subject. They can be short, brutal, smart, pithy, lengthy, etc. But, they should never be the same. Think of sentences as people of the world; we are each different, beautiful in our own right. Wouldn't life be mundane if we were all the same, even if we were all "well constructed?"

If you go simple, go deep. It is better to say too little than too much, better to have the reader engaged in his/her own world building than to tire over loquacious expressiveness.

Take one of the most memorable passages from the Bible, in the eleventh chapter of John in the New Testament. These are possibly the most moving words ever written, and they are simple...

"Jesus wept."

Take risks. Consider patterns that best suit your work. Ballet would be brief and boring if the dancers were stuck in first position. Instead, they perform short Brisé volé moves, powerful Jeté entrelacés, ending in a deep, slow Plié. Remember to have variety, energy, and grace to make the performance of your work at it's best.

With a bit of direction on what TO do, please also notice and be aware of what NOT to do. Don't fall privy to one of the following sentence sins…

Purple Prose

Sure, purple prose is beautiful. It’s also heavy and slow. Purple prose is to writing what the dancing hippos were to fantasia.

“The moon shone, dripping over the horizon, shoving aside the shadows and creeping into the dripping sap of the bayou with sticky fingers, pushing its beams of illumination into the mansion, revealing a brooding mademoiselle of tears and grief, knife to throat, morals asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the draining veins of the stout man, screaming madly at him, “You deserve to die, and so do I!”

Who got through that sentence? Something incredible is going on, and the reader can barely see it amongst “mush.” That doozy needs to be tamed, simplified, and split into several sentences.

Plain Boring

Similar to the passage above, see how far you can get through this paragraph without stopping or zoning out.

“He sincerely regretted to inform the vehicle’s owner of the unceremonious damage caused as their unmaintained boom performed a faulty function and lowered into the front portion of the right corner bumper of the vehicle. Repairs had been required for some time on this piece of equipment, however, due to the large volume of traffic seen in said parking garage, the mechanical needs had fallen into neglect, hence causing damage and frustration.”

There are a hundred ways to tell this in a more interesting manner without losing the reader.

In summation, your reader expects you to take them on a journey! Design the page in a way that takes the words away and leaves only your glorious story.

This has been another "'No Post on Sundays' Post"

#NoPostonSundaysPost

Happy Saint Nicholas Day!

(And happy birthday to me!)

We’re all aware of the figure of Santa Claus, and it’s safe to guess that most adults have a vague knowledge of the history surrounding the man, the myth, the legend. At the very least, I can assume that most people know “Santa Claus” is based on a very real man: St. Nicholas.

However, not only is St. Nicholas an anomaly in our modern world for being one of the few annually recognized Saints (a catholic practice that was largely disbanded in the 1500s during the Reformation; a religious movement that led to the creation of Protestantism), he also has direct ties to me. And that’s the subject of my focus, because it’s my birthday, and I’m selfish like that.

In Western Christians countries, Saint Nicholas Day is observed on December 6^th (my birthday!), the day of his passing in 343 AD. He was a Greek man, and the bishop of Myra, Lycia (modern day Turkey).

He was a pretty rockin' dude...

In addition to being the patron saint of children, Saint Nicholas of Myra helped 3 sisters avoid prostitution by leaving them gold on 3 separate occasions, in order for their father to afford a dowry. In the fourth century, a destitute, unmarried woman was likely to turn to prostitution out of necessity.

St. Nicholas reportedly saved three men, who were falsely imprisoned and sentenced to death when the governor Eustathius took a bribe to condemn them.

He protected and offered gifts to sailors, used his inheritance to help the poor and sick, and aided people regardless of sex or age.

He had a thirst for sincere and true religion, suffered the loss of his parents at an early age, and underwent an imprisonment of his own, due to his faith.

Cool dude, right? What a great example of a life well lived.

I, for one, am grateful for the Dutch. St. Nicholas remained an important figure in Holland, even after the Reformation—in a similar fashion to which the works of St. Patrick have been kept alive in Ireland—and many of our Christmas traditions stem from the Dutch practices of St. Nicholas day on December 6^th.  Even the name, Sinter Klaas or Sint Nikolass, is where our jolly old saint’s name derives. (Oh yeah, did I mention I went to a college in Holland, MI where our mascot was the Flying Dutchman. The coincidences just keep rolling in.)

So, in addition to sharing my birthday with St. Nicholas’s day, and my namesake with the town in which he served and died, I took it up a notch and married a man named Nicholas. And we love Christmas.

(Please visit the links below for more information)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nicholas_Day

https://www.catholiccompany.com/getfed/st-nicholas-facts-legends/

http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=371

http://www.history.com/topics/christmas/santa-claus

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131219-santa-claus-origin-history-christmas-facts-st-nicholas/