Workarounds

I’m late to writing today because we have intermittent Internet outages here. I’m keeping my fingers crossed because I have two video meetings today — one with one of my colleagues about internships for the summer (which are pretty rocky right now) and one to congratulate some of my interns for a good semester. (This is part of their celebration with a local placement who treats their interns well).

My home computer is malfunctioning again. Same problem as before (no cursor), except that I haven’t been able to shame it into working again. It apparently has to do with a Windows update. Why is Windows Update killing my computer?

I have become frighteningly tied to my computer during this pandemic. I interact with students and faculty, grade assignments, look up things, surf occasionally for fun, make social contact, write/revise my novels, submit queries … Right now the computer is the only contact I really have with the outside world. Because my files are on Dropbox, I can’t even access them without my fiber connection when the fiber connection goes out.

I am going to have to find some workarounds. I have a wireless hot spot, but it needs some data added to it. We’re going to do that before Richard leaves for work today. I can draft using paper and fountain pen, or even better — I have a livescribe pen that does an pretty good job rendering my handwriting into digital (I bought it for $30 — I highly advise buying gently used high-tech items on ebay or amazon).

This moment reminds me that there are always workarounds, but sometimes they take effort and money and time to find. Glasses are a workaround for those of us without perfect vision. Insulin is a workaround for people with pancreatic dysfunctions. Cars are a workaround for people who can’t walk 20 miles into work. I’m in a pretty good place for workarounds, although if my computer doesn’t start working properly, there might be an expensive workaround in my future. But one I likely can afford.

We can’t expect people with limited resources to make workarounds without help. This is why the response to quarantine has been so difficult for education. Some of our students don’t have access to computers at home. Some live in large families in apartments and don’t really have privacy. Some don’t have Internet. So we try the best we can to facilitate their education.

We need workarounds. Because plans aren’t always perfect, because things (and people) break. Embrace the workaround.

Reflecting on six weeks of isolation

This is the view from my window”

Gloomy, isn’t it. The window is right by my downstairs workstation, however, where I do most of my writing. Sometimes it’s sunny. Sometimes I see people walking past and cars driving by.

This is my life under quarantine.

So are my experiments with sourdoughs. Today, a loaf of yeast water no-knead bread (Henrietta) sits on the stovetop, waiting for its time to bake. (Yeast water is different from sourdough in that you have what amounts to a weak wine working on the bread dough).

So is my writing. I took a break from adding a stronger beginning to Prodigies yesterday; I should be able to finish that today and then go through the book to adapt things.

So is coffee. Between my husband’s roasts brewed in a vacuum pot and the Nespresso machine for mid-afternoon cups, I’m covered.

So are the fountain pens I’m collecting — All under $25, mostly Japanese (Pilot Metropolitan, Platinum Plaisir) and German (Lamy Al-Star), and a really inexpensive Jinhao that looks like a Lamy made by Rubbermaid). This and ink is where my allowance has been going the past few months, as I like collecting practical things I can use.

So is my teaching online. And the Zoom faculty meetings.

I don’t have it too bad, despite the view out my window being very limited. My husband and I still have jobs that allow social isolation. We have money for groceries. We have four cats. We have each other. We’re staying healthy.

This quarantine is so much harder for so many other people.

Unmotivated

I’m not feeling it today.

Some days, I don’t feel like writing, and today is that day. I need to write that next chapter to Prodigies (the revision adds four chapters, maybe 5). I need to write this blog (I am writing it, but it’s taking a lot of will to do it.)

I’m tired (still). Maybe the coffee will help.

A change of scenery would help, but I can’t go anywhere!

The best remedy for procrastination in my opinion: Write for five minutes. If you want to quit after that, do so. But chances are you’ll want to write more, once you’re in it.

Except today. I don’t think it’s going to work today.

Maybe the coffee will help.

The Incomplete Dev Edit

Right now I’m adding for chapters to the beginning of Prodigies, in order to reveal the character better and capture more of the spirit of Save the Cat (in other words, placing the character in her before life, setting a theme, introducing a debate).

What frustrates me is that this book went through a dev editor, and I in good faith thought that I had done what I needed to in the book, only to be tipped off by a thoughtful agent who rejected me: “I loved the beautiful description you started with, but I lost interest in the characters.” I had to figure out for myself, given what I recently learned about plotting from Save the Cat, what I needed to do. This is something I couldn’t have figured out myself, given my familiarity with the characters, and something I needed the dev editor to pick out for me.

I’m ashamed that I sent this out to query with this kind of flaw in it. I have found similar flaws in other books of mine — I start right into the action, and apparently this is bad.

I wish someone had told me.

The End in the Time of Coronavirus

A glimpse out the window
at blasted apple blossoms
and snowfall blotting out
the first green of spring
and the doors barred
to keep contagion out —
the world could end
with an ellipse
at the end of a message
as
all
traffic
ceases.

The beginning of a novel

I got an agent rejection for Prodigies the other day (that’s been out for a while; I guess it got backlogged) with a difference: The agent explained what she found wrong with the book.

She loved the setting and the beginning descriptions, but she couldn’t get into the characters.

I looked at the novel and realized the reason she couldn’t get into the characters was that I never gave her a chance to.

The beginning of a book, according to Save the Cat methodology, should accomplish a few things: The character in her original setting before the action begins. A theme to the book. The debate where she goes on her path — but perhaps it’s the wrong path.

My book starts with the action — no chance of getting to understand Grace, no way to see Grace in her original setting, In other words, no way to identify with Grace.

My beta reader didn’t tell me about this, which is worrisome. On the other hand, I am learning enough about the structure of novels that I can fix this (I’m fixing this right now) and hopefully I will be able to incorporate this into new novels.

A Sunday Morning in the Age of COVID

(There was to be a picture here, but for some reason I can’t get my pictures to mail to me.)

Sunday mornings in my house:

This much hasn’t changed: Classical music in the background — today it’s an album of violin concertos.

Coffee — currently we’re drinking a store-bought coffee; usually we drink beans that Richard roasts himself.

Cats — there are four, although one seldom comes upstairs. One of them, Girlie (the patched tabby with the attitude) is sitting next to me. She helps me get my work done.

Now, in the time of COVID: Breakfast is usually cereal, but in the quarantine I’ve discovered that I like playing with sourdough starter, and so sourdough bread as french toast is the featured meal of the day. I will make more sourdough bread later. I’ve named my starters: Marcy is a Polish whole wheat starter, Horatio is a home-captured wild yeast, and MarcyxHenrietta is an accidental batch that got spiked by the yeast water known as Henrietta.

My computer — I work on my writing on Sundays. Normally, I would be on my way to the cafe to write for a while. Now I write in a corner of the living room, burgundy and gold. I hate to be far from the action, which is part of why I used to write at the coffee shop. I miss the coffee shop.

The view through the window — all the snow from the freakish snowstorm has melted, and the sky is a blue-grey. I need to get out, even if it’s just a trip in the car to the local park.

Today, for some reason, feels like Easter (which it is for the Orthodox faiths) and I have hope that we will rise from this pandemic a more thoughtful people.

Lost Rituals

It’s Saturday, and most of the snow has melted. The apple blossoms, however, are not coming back, so there will be no apples this year. It’s symbolic, I think, for all the rituals of American life which will be put on hold this year because of the coronavirus — graduation ceremonies, weddings, birthday parties. Burials go on, but funerals do not.

I worry about not having these rituals, especially the rituals of transition like college and high school graduations. Without these types of rituals, we feel rudderless, out of sorts. We need a recognition of what we’ve accomplished and where we’re going.

At the college, our students won’t go through graduation until fall, if we are even out of shelter-in-place by then. Our retiring faculty and staff will get no parties.

I suspect that our changed situation will be temporary, but that temporary could be as long as a year and a half. A cohort of people will not have their rituals to cling to, will feel rudderless, bereft. And although it is a small pain compared to the real possibilities of losing a family member, I will still mourn it with you.

A poem for COVID-19 and ten inches of snow

I don’t write poems as much as I used to, mostly because I’ve gotten to an impasse with poetry. I know from experience submitting poems that my poems don’t quite have what it means to be great, and I don’t seem to be able to figure out what they are missing. I also think they’re too short compared to modern poetry. But here’s a depressing poem for today:

A glimpse out the window
at blasted apple blossoms
and snowfall blotting out
the first green of spring
and the doors barred
to keep contagion out —
the world could end
with an ellipse
at the end of a message
as
all
traffic
ceases.

Collecting Kindness

Today, one of my favorite Internet Cats, Maya, is #collectingkindness. Toward this end, she is asking people (I love the imagery of this) for pictures, poems, essays, etc about what they consider kindness to be.

To me, kindness is giving without calculating a return, without regarding how the other compares to you relative to color, race, ability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or religion. Just giving, whether that be a smile, a favor, a conversation, recognition, love. No strings attached.