Last night Joe and I went out to celebrate meeting my first deadline with my editor. We went to Nepenthe and had a wonderful dinner. And as we were dining a good friend came up to us and asked me if Joe told me the story about the wild woman. I'm like, "Ah, no." So Eric and Joe proceeded to tell me the crazy story about one of the "woods people," a barefoot older woman with wild eyes and crazy hair, dressed in a see through top and capris, who popped out of the redwoods [Yano, like they do] while Joe and Eric had pulled over at a turnout to chat. She asked for a ride to a store very close by.

And I'm listening to the story and it just keeps getting better and better and all the while I'm thinking, "Hmmmm. If a man popped out of the woods with see-through pants on I think I prolly would have mentioned it to my hubby."

Is this the difference between men and women? Women do talk more, I'm sure. Are we natural storytellers?

But, maybe that's a biased storyteller/writer's POV. Hubby just doesn't go on and on about anything. Not the chit-chat, small talk type. He's got stories to tell, for sure, he just doesn't feel the need to spew all of his like I do. But srsly? Wild woman jumping out of redwoods? I think I mighta brought that one up. You?

Today I'm typing in my bra and a very sheer skirt. The barrel is heating up fast this morning. I am grateful that we have water again. We've been flittering lately. Not quite hampstering, as is my usual M.O. More like flittering. A question we ask every weekend, a la Clash, is "Should we stay or should we go?" Looks like we are staying again this weekend. I may or may not be driving to Bitterwater this afternoon to take care of some property in the hills of California whose fame faded fast after the gold rush and all that's left to give anyone any idea that people had populated that part of the world is an abandoned cemetery with a few marble gravestones still standing and a wooden gate with the word "Cemetary" painted in white. It's beautiful there. Quiet and Oso likes to rile up the cows. It all depends on meetings and conference calls. Meanwhile I read over my first 50 pages for the last pass on some edits I've made before I send them in to my editor. I'm looking forward to working with her.

As I get my manuscript submission ready, I am reminded of a conversation I had with my editor at The LA Times. He was interested when he learned I was writing fiction and the first question out of his mouth was, "Who is your editor?" I was like, "Um, well, we really don't have any. We go to critique groups and we revise that way. To which he replied, "Every one needs and editor." So true. But so hard to find.

I have to post this because I just can't stop laughing every time I see it!

Took a trip to Monterey over the weekend. First we headed for a Laundry and then we headed for the pier.







We went to the fish market to pick up a tasty bass for dinner,




Then, on our way back to the car,




Got a view of the Bay




Talked with some kids on their way to Louisiana.

Great way to spend a Saturday!

Shamrocks by the Sea
A gift to you from me.
For today only, I'll email my notes from the Big Sur Writer's Workshop to anyone who PMs me with their email address.

I love St. Patrick's Day. Three fun things that's happened to me on St. Patty's Days gone by:

1. Ditching High School to go to the St. Patrick's Day parade in Chicago with my buddies.
2. Trapping Leprechauns
3. Accepting an offer on the sale of our first house.

Celebrating today by making corned beef and going to hear a local band play at a restaurant in town.

To get your Irish on go here and here.

This just in: Had our water turned off at the barrel this AM. Tank low, should be full this morning. We've got plenty of beer though. Maybe I should take a bath in it!

Five Interesting Questions I'm Pondering:

1. What is my goal for this book?

2. What is my goal as a writer?

3. What kind of dessert am I? [Yeah, you've seen the email. I'm Chocolate Frosting on Chocolate Cake]

4. When is enough enough? Some answers here.

5. Why do I tweet?

And I have to say that there is nothing like riding a motorcycle through a glade of Eucalyptus Trees.

So last night Joe and I hung out with our buddy Christian, who we rent our barrel from. We were in his kitchen talking about this and that when I asked about an old picture hanging on his kitchen wall of four older ladies all sitting on a bench. He says, "Oh, those are my kitchen witches." Cool. I was intrigued and so I've spent a good part of my morning looking into them [instead of writing]. Found some interesting articles here and here and here. Do you have a kitchen witch? Did your mom or grandma?

Posting this here because yesterday one of my tweeple linked to this Elizabeth Gilbert video on creativity and it made me feel fabulous:



I think writers, even aspiring ones like me, get asked where they get their ideas. And I have to say that the answer is pretty simple. Everywhere. Like here and here. I love that we humans have a fascination about getting lost.

I've been thinking a lot about my muse lately. Since I wasn't certain if she was a guy or a gal in my last post, I got curious. So I sat and thought about it a while. How do I see a story typically and what "voice" do I hear. For the most part I'd have to say that my muse is a 16 yr. old dreamer. A girl, sometimes a girl who sees herself as more like a woman. I like thinking about where my voice comes from when I write. If you get a glimpse of your muse today you might want to take a good look at him or her.

Three very scary words that make writing anything less scary: Open. Heart. Surgery. Hoping our good friend is on the road to recovery very, very soon.

First of all I WON the coveted dollar Oscar bet this year. Every year the family [achem, well this year it was just me and Joe] fills out their Oscar ballot and the one who chooses the most winners wins the buck. I got 17 right this year. Feeling. Groovy. Only got one out of two of my online predictions right, but nailing the Best Adapted Screenplay category felt good and Sean Penn is awesome [though, I wish he would have sent a shout out to Buttercup, his wife!]

Ah, well. Good times. No real Mardi Gras plans tonight, yet. Got my beads ready though.

I love my muse. Not sure if she's a boy or a girl but when I'm visited it feels fantastic. Like, last night, when I was re-reading Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass [because I learn something new every time I read it and he'll be at The Big Sur Writing Workshop that I'm attending in a couple weeks. Do download the free book called "The Career Novelist" off the agency website. Fantastic. ] a story just came to me. Seriously. And, in typical writer-nerd fashion, I rolled over and reached for my bedside notebook and started scribbling. YES. I absolutely LOVE that kind of channeling of a character. One who shows up and doesn't care what your doing and just starts telling you things. And here's the thing, it may or may not take the next 5 years of my life to sort out exactly who's telling this story, but I don't care. I love it.

What am I working on today? Writing the end of a novel I began four years ago. It's so funny how somethings come easy and others, well, don't. I'd say about 90 pages came easy so I can't complain. But those 90 pages had to cook for a while. So, as I type here at the barrel, I'm giving my muse a shout out for following me up to Big Sur and whispering in my ear. Thank you!

A picture I took on New Year's Eve at the last sunset of 2008 at Julie Pfeiffer Beach


I spent the first part of this morning pulling a chunk of wood out from under my fingernail. OW! And, as I dug deep with the tweezer I wondered which was more painful, digging the splinter out or outlining the novel I am revising. Close call, for me, that is.

CONS:

Why is it SO painful? I would have to say outlining the way Darcy recommends is a SLOW process for me. I am analyzing every scene for:

1. Chapter
2. Scene #
3. Characters Present
4. POV
5. Setting
6. Action
7. Pulse [The emotions of the characters in the scene]
8. Plot Points
9. Time Frame
10. Words/pages

So...what is a scene? Well, I'm thinking of it in DVD terms. Seeing my book as if I had it in the player and wanted to get to a certain scene quickly. What would my DVD scene list look like? It's the only way I've been able to get this in my head. It's also how I plan my books, by scene lists. I also use The Children's Writer Newsletter of Writing and Publishing Trends Jan 2009 article "Actions & Reactions, Scenes & Sequels" as a guide. Click here for a great article on Scenes & Sequels [with O. Henry examples, one of my all time favorite writers].

Sitting down every day to eek out a few more scenes in the outline feels like time stops. I am SO slow and can only manage to outline a few chapters a day. Sometimes it's painful like, well, a splinter lodged under my fingernail. I wonder if this is due to my near hamster-like attention span, or if this outlining thing is truly the kind of hard work I can only do in small chunks. Probably a combination of the two.


PROS:

In spite of my hampster qualities, this hard work is paying off. I can see my strengths and weaknesses as a writer in a way I never have before outlining.

For instance, I am taking note that I don't push my characters emotions enough. I noticed that the five best chapters in my novel are the ones where the scene/sequel set up is clear AND the emotions are true and front and center. My early drafts skim over the real heart of the emotional story. This is where I need to work harder.

I've discovered plot inconsistencies.

This is gold. And I am finding these areas where I need to tighten the story in the outlining process in a way that none of the other revision methods I've tried have. [*gulps coffee*]

I lose track of some characters.

Hmmm. What to do? We'll see. Some will stay and some will go.

Here's where I am in the outlining process Stats: On page 87 outlining what my other revision techniques have pointed out is the best chapter of the book. Total pages: 167. It has taken me nearly two weeks to outline 87 pages. Hope to be done by the end of next week, thinking that I might get faster as I go.

Well, back to the outline!

I read on cynthialord's blog that there is a superstition that what you do on the first day of the year will dictate what the year holds in store for you. I hope that's true because on New Year's Day Joe and I hit the road on his dirt bike and drove all over the cliffs of Big Sur trying to find a way to get from the beach to our wine barrel home on Pfeiffer ridge. But, well, we got distracted by gates that were open and normally locked and ended up driving roads with names like Pias Ranch Road and Bear Kills Two Calves Creek Road.

After parking the bike, ignoring signs about unstable hillsides, mudslides and no trespassing we took a little path covered in lime colored grass, that kind of unreal new growth green, and made our way along a cliff of the Santa Lucias just above the Pacific. I was about to sit and listen to the surf and go no further, but, well, the trail was just too green and too. It called to me. Looked safe enough. On we went even as chunks of the trail had fallen into the ocean below. Should we turn back? Should we keep going?

You guessed it, we kept going. Not too much further up the trail we stopped at a memorial made in the shade of a tree. A condor feather stuck into the mud surrounded by abalone shells, crab shells and rocks all the color of bones picked clean, whiter than white in The New Year's sun. We walked on and spotted some kayaks at a clearing further down the cliff. We climbed down steps hand made by someone who should have been riding in those kayaks on the turquoise sea on this brilliant first day of 2009. Further on down the embankment we came across a Robinson-Crusoe-type combination of stairs and ropes that allowed us to repel/descend the steep embankment down to the rocky beach. I sat on a rock, ribbons of quartzite laced over it's surface like some granite spider had spun a web, and listened to the surf. Up close the sound of the surf was much more powerful, primal even. And I imagined that the sound of the sea hitting the cliffs must be the oldest sound on the planet.

And I thought about my writing on that rock. Hoping I'd have the courage to take some risks with it just like we had taken to get to that special place on the beach. I hoped that my writing this year would take its own road less traveled and would lead to this kind of joy and unexpected adventure. I learned a lesson about revision. It's only seeing our stories, like the trail Joe and I took, through all the twists and turns and past the scary bits that the real pay off comes. Something not to be feared but embraced and if you trust the process you might just have the journey of a lifetime. I'll let revision call to me like the trail did.

Candy and I made this heart in the Nevada desert while rewilding.

I learned one thing about myself this year:

I can do anything for a year.

It's been my motto for a long time now. But after saying the phrase and then living through the experience brought on by the freedom to do what I might not ordinarily have done, I am always amazed how invigorated I feel and how stretching those life muscles is always a good thing. My motto is the closest thing I have to a magic spell. This year was maybe the biggest challenge to my mantra. And now, Joe will turn to me with a wink whenever some opportunity comes along that we might consider too outrageous or too difficult or too mind-boggling and says, "Laur, we can do anything for a year." And I laugh. Because, I know he is right.

So, how will we see this epic year out? Quietly. We'll be at Pfeiffer beach watching the sunset to get the party started.

And what about my writing? Well, I've been writing like the wind. And what's more important? Learning how to revise. Indeed, my left brain can't stand my right brain. And vice versa. Time for my magic words: I can revise one of my novels this year. I know I can.

Last night Joe and I sat down and stuffed our Company christmas cards together. Joe brought a poinsettia home to the barrel yesterday and it sits on the table where all the action took place. This is our second year sending out cards for our new company. I put our logo on the cards this year. We watched Young Frankenstein and Pulp Fiction as we wrote and stamped and stuffed. Because, well, nothing says Christmas like comedy/horror and Quentin Tarantino. It didn't really occur to me that the Christmas Carols weren't playing like usual. It didn't really occur to me we hadn't been watching Christmas movies. We just joked and stuffed and toasted the year that was.

I'm revising/rewriting TS and have a few things going for me this time 'round that I didn't before. Perspective. After researching and rewriting the novel for the better half of this year, I put it down while I NaNo'd. A plan. Yes, they do come in handy, don't they? Not being a big planner in all things real, it's no surprise that I write my fantasies organically. Here are a few new revising/rewriting tools in my toolbox: Junkfoodmonkey's Editing Recipe, AutoCrit, and "Word Magic for Writers". This book is amazing. I feel like I am learning so much about sentence construction and word choice. Definitely an area I need to improve as a writer. And, lastly, I'm trusting my instincts about polishing the story and revising to sharpen its impact. Something pretty revealing is that I've never had a post tagged "revision" until today. Guess I'm ready.

Here at the barrel there isn't room for most of the decorations we usually have about us this time of year. A small wreath of cranberries dangles on a nail between two picture windows. Christmas lights hang like garland framing the churning Pacific while redwoods bow to howling winds. Our advent calendar traveled with us to the barrel. It hangs on the refrigerator, beside New York City and Obama magnets. This morning was my turn to open window #8. A smiling kite greeted Joe and I behind the window first thing this morning. Back home, a red poinsettia sits in my kitchen, four more join a wreath of noble fir and pine cones at our front door. I like the rhythm simplicity has brought to our holidays this year. It has been a gift in itself. A slowing of the pace. Appreciation of the decorations that some times get lost in the productions of years past.

We've been on the road a year come the end of December. There are times that illustrate what that has meant to our lives. None as telling as what happened to me while I was home last week, my first week at home in a year. This time of year I like to get my Christmas Eve recipes all together in a recipe holder my daughter Candy made when she was little. I usually have to hunt for them in my overstuffed recipe box. But this year, I reached for the recipe holder and there, pinched in between the wooden clothespin, were all my Christmas recipes, waiting for me to return.

To all of you who inspire me every day!

To all the firefighters, PG&E, the folks who were out of work for five months and then came back to work at the Inn, and to the folks who figured out how to get the water back on at the barrel this week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today's nano sentence: "Pamina closed her eyes and breathed in the bewitching scent of the rose as if it alone could calm the sea of uncertainty inside her."

This inspires me today. A metamorphosis of sorts. Mx did a photo shoot and I just love this photo. Love how she's transformed. My nano novel is about metamorphosis. I find the process fascinating. We are constantly re-imagining, reinventing ourselves, evolving. I love the intensity of self-discovery, a common theme in my books. After seeing MX in this photo I'm inspired to keep up my quest: to tell one good story.

Here's a nano sentence: "And since Pamina knew little of singing into the mask, her emotions flavored the aria and fed the ever hungry curse."

Because I feel like taunting my friends...and helping with my own word count which is in danger of falling woefully behind this weekend unless I do something drastic...I challenge you to a word war!! Heh-heh-heh. Didn't see that coming aye? Well, anyone can play. Not in Nano? Then I challenge you to write 5001 words this weekend on your WIP. We can do it! Here's what I'll have on hand: jalepeno chips, chocolate, a trip to see Quantum of Solace [*giggles at what thebirdsings told me about Mr. Craig*], several road trips to distant locations, And...lots and lots of plot twists. Ya with me? I'll prolly be typing in the wee hours of the morn' but I know it will be worth it.

NaNo sentence: "Ghosts have names."

This grueling thing called NaNo. Kill me now. But sometimes incredible things happen that leaves me floating on air. Like last night. Met a friend at Nepenthe and words poured onto our screens faster than wine poured into our glasses. We laughed and commiserated about stubborn characters and my characters' propensity for 'heart racing' and my childish use of the word 'and.' As we laughed and typed I found out that thebirdsings sang opera and her mother is an opera star. [FYI my book is about a girl who discovers that her life is like a famous opera and she'll stop at nothing to change the ending.] This month has been full of serendipity in my story and in RL. Like, in all of Big Sur there are only two NaNo's and we discover we are living right next to each other. Cool.

NaNo sentence: "Sometimes, a common history weaves and dances around strangers."

What's the biggest surprise I've gotten writing this novel? Well, a few days ago I cursed one of my characters. I didn't plan on it. The curse just sort of happened. And it was a lot of fun too:) I also didn't plan on having my characters know a now dead language, but that's just all in a good day's NaNo. I mean what is a novel without a good curse and dead languages?

Here's today's NaNo Sentence: "And so there, on that October night, Ariana and her husband met each other in heaven with much left undone in the world of men."

I don't often dream about my stories. Occasionally I'll wake up with an idea or I'll fall asleep to one. But, last night I had an amazing dream about my Nano story. And, I guess the word-sweatshop that was the barrel over the weekend had something to do with it. Nothing like pounding out words for a novel to keep it front and center in your mind. And truly I had no idea where I was going to go with the story today, until last night. So it's a good day in NaNo Land. And, since some mythical creatures have appeared in my story, I thought I'd take the mythical quiz. You should too! Procrastination is a wonderful thing...no nymphs or sirens in my story yet, btw, ah, but the day is young.

What Mythical Creature are you? Your Result: Nymph   Nymphs are known for being extraordinarily beautiful. Unlike other mythical creatures, Nymphs are completely unselfish and do not always realize their beauty. Because of this naivette, they are easily taken advantage of. Nymphs are quite innocent and devoted. They have one main passion in life, and devote themselves to it. As a Nymph, you are pure of heart, playful, and very free spirited.
Siren
Elf
Vampire
Werewolf
What Mythical Creature are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

My Nano sentence: "Long ago, in a time before cell phones and texting, before refrigerators and freezers, when people rode horses to get to town and door bells were really bells, a little girl named Isolde lived in a small town in Provence called Gord."

For years and years Sunday meant church and big meals and taking a load off as much as possible [between loads of laundry and the endless weekend errands]. But then things changed. Somewhere along the way Joe and I stopped attending church regularly. And now I go to church on the back of Joe’s motorcycle. When in Big Sur, we usually take Sunday drives on dirt roads someplace in the Santa Lucia Mountains. It never fails to give me the same special feeling I used to get during an amazing hymn or kneeling at communion.

Today, after an awesome breakfast at Deetjen’s, we drove the Old Coast Road up above Ventana. I had never traveled so far on the Old Coast Road. I saw more of the devastation from this summer’s fires and was truly humbled. As I always am by the beauty we see on our Sunday Drives. New green growth has begun peeking out between the cracks of the charred bark of the burned and disfigured redwoods. At the top of the hills we hiked a little and looked at the watershed for this year’s upcoming storms. The still, blue Pacific sat far below. And I couldn’t help but imagine how amazing it would be to see a sea monster peek it’s head out of the water.

NaNo sentence: "Because, sweet child, we are only able to sing because of two little pieces of heaven placed in our throats and it's important for us to know how to use them well."