Christmas Memories

Last Christmas my daughter traveled and hour and a half to spend Christmas with her father and his family. Shortly after she arrived at her grandmother’s house her father and his wife left to attend a Christmas party and my daughter was angry. She arranged to spend time with him but he didn’t arrange to spend time with her. Two months later her father died, he was 45 and the Christmas they spent…or didn’t spend was the last one they had.

Every event since his death has been a milestone, her first Easter without her dad, her first birthday and now her first Christmas. Of course I realize that her father would have planned differently had he known, but I suppose that is maybe my point, we just don’t.

Remember the things that matter the most,

Soloist

Progress

There is little question that the very first work of fiction I chose is an unrealistic undertaking by anyone standards. My writing has come so far since I began this mission and I love the story I’m creating more today than I did when I started. Once we got moved and settled in our new house I felt like a gear in my head shifted, the book started gushing out and hasn’t quit. It’s almost like I finally grasp something that was needed and everything just spilled from there.

I deliberately skipped a word count today because I think I irked a friend and felt sort sorry that I mentioned it. I never used to do a word count until I read Stephen King who said to shoot for 1500 words a day and recently that has come effortlessly so my daily word count is always a curiosity to see how close I can able to come. I never make myself write until I hit 1500 words, I just write and see what I have when its time to pay attention to the rest of my life. I kid you not, if I didn’t have a family and a business to run, I’d eat dinner and kick out another 1500. I’m so in love with how this story is developing that it tinges the tone of the rest of my day…in a really lovely way.

 My family will be away for the weekend, I hope I have a huge chunk of time were I don’t have to pry myself away. When I quit today at 2 it wasn’t because I was ready by any stretch of the imagination. I wish, wish, wish I had a chunk of time that nothing at all was expected of me. I could just burrow into my room with my laptop and run with it. I wonder how far I would get? I wonder if I’d finally run out? I can’t picture that but who knows..

It’s exciting to recognize my own learning curve as a fiction writer and to see my skill and my understanding evolve. My grip on this gotten so strong and that feels really good. 2 months ago finishing this book felt like an if, but I just couldn’t forget about it, today that if has turned to a (sigh) when.

Cellphone Fiction? Who Knew…

While skimming the blogisphere I ran across this story about a 21 year old nursery school teacher who has become one of Japan’s hottest authors. Here’s the twist, she wrote the book on her cellphone.

MSNBC

Absent

Now that were are more or less settled in our new house I’ve gone back to work on my novel. The book is coming so fast and with such ease that I am having a hard time dedicating myself to anything else.

Yesterday, my house was buried under about 7 inches of snow. I planned to spend my day baking cookies and sweet breads but when I woke up my story was already clipping along inside my head and I ended up hammering out about 2000 words. I really wanted to keep going by my daughter was looking lonely so she offered to give a personal concert and played Christmas music on her violin for me. It’s nice when her and I are in writing mode at the same time. I fell asleep early the other night while she cranked out 13 handwritten pages.

This leads me to another subject. Since she writes by hand then types her fiction work into the computer I think I found her the perfect Christmas gift, a recent invention called the FLY-pentop. While you write it keeps track of everything your putting down on paper, when you’ve finished you can load it to a word-processing program. It also calculates math while you write it out and can be used as a document scanner. I can spill the beans here because she doesn’t read my blog:)

My daughter was the one who found it and I thought it was a cool idea especially for someone who writes fiction by hand. We’ll see how well it works, but it got good reviews in Business Week, its target market is 9-14 year olds but its word processing capability makes it of special interest to writers who like to produce on paper. Prices vary a lot from site to site, Walmart online appears to have the best price. Don’t bother trying to look at in store because there only available in certain stores.

Falling into Fiction,

Soloist