Top Ten Reasons You Know Your First Draft is Done

On Friday I finished the first draft of my sequel to Screwing Up Time. (Confetti and cheers.) Though, of course, after I wrote the final word, I thought, “Oh, dear, maybe it’s not really done. Maybe my readers will be disappointed. Or, maybe I’ve written too much and over-gilded the lily.

I figured that other writers must have the same problem. And while I can’t read your manuscript and tell you if it’s done, I think there are outside factors that may strongly indicate when a first draft is complete. So I’ve come up with a checklist.

 “How to Know When Your First Draft is Complete.”

1. Your beautiful flower garden is now being considered for a filming of Tarzan.

2. Your pile of ironing has collected dust.

3. You look in the mirror and discover your eyebrows resemble hedgerows—and the eighties look is not in. (Why can’t that come back?)

4. You’ve emailed your latest WIP (work-in-progress) to yourself, at least two hundred times—after all, you never know when your computer will die.  (BTW, in the old days, writers used to store hard copies in the freezer.)

5. The printed letters on your computer keyboard have worn off. My space bar is actually “grooved.”

6. When your children need you, they IM you.

7. You are adept at writing while cooking, which explains the spaghetti sauce smears across the laptop screen.

8. Your dog throws her water bowl into your lap.

9. Your refrigerator has Tupperware cartons of leftovers that are unrecognizable and move under their own power.

10. Your husband bites your neck and complains that he’s a book widower.

Borrowing Library E-books

Very cool, exciting tech news for me. I borrowed an e-book from the library while wearing my jammies and eating breakfast! 

I’ve been waiting since December when I got my Kindle, hoping that libraries and Amazon could reach an agreement. They finally did. I don’t know how many books are currently available. But the book I looked for, which is a new release, was lendable through the library. Interestingly, my library had the hardback version of the book and I could have borrowed it, but they charge a fee for new releases and they don’t for e-books. Yay!

It was pretty easy to download—of course, tech-daughter has already done it so she said, “Click there, click here, click that. Now turn on your Kindle so it can download the book.” Voilà. Now I have the latest Daniel Silva book to read while I run the treadmill this afternoon.

A brave new reader’s world. No more driving to the library, trying to remember which days they are open. No more overdue fees. I’m loving it.

As for Walter the squirrel, someone gave us a humane trap (Thanks, Ken) so we're going to try catching him again. In the meantime, Walter has been a busy boy. Here he is attending a Cardinals game this week. Click here to take you to MLB and watch the video.

Squirrel in the Attic

We have a new pet. Okay, not really a “pet” per se. Pets are cute, cuddly, and you actually want them. This creature, who I’ll call Walter (after the uber-bizarre character on Fringe, which I sometimes watch because I love my son though I despise the show.) lives in the attic.

Walter is a squirrel. We know Walter lives up there because we’ve seen his beady eye balls glowing red in the flashlight beams. We would LOVE to get rid of Walter because he’s a danger to our house. Imagine chewing through electrical wire—my hope is the power would short before the cellulose insulation caught fire.

The big problem is we can’t figure out how Walter gets into the attic. We’ve walked the outside of the house looking for gaps. Nothing. The attic vents are secure. (When Cal was in grad school, he worked for a pest control company doing this sort of thing. But Walter is good and sneaky.) So Walter still lives in the attic and presumably gets out to gather food.

One day, we decided to track Walter in the attic. That idea had one great flaw—Walter is nimble as a squirrel and we are not. Other flaws: Our attic is huge so even finding Walter is a chore. Our attic has no lighting so you have to hold a flashlight in your mouth as you grab beams. Our attic has no flooring so would-be squirrel trackers must hop from rafter to rafter, hoping to avoid falling through the ceiling and hitting the wooden flooring after a 12 foot drop. Let’s just say that my college ballet instructor would be pleased at my leaps, balance and pirouettes. And before you get the false impression that I was actually a good squirrel tracker, let me explain that I ended up sitting on a beam while Calvin “danced” around the attic, chasing Walter.

In spite of Cal’s dancing prowess, Walter outsmarted us. And we’ve given up, at least for now. When Cal and I lay in bed at night, we listen to Walter jump around the attic—squirrel partytime. And I feel proud of Walter, which is kind of pathetic. But then I have an odd sense of humor and think that Allstate’s raccoon commercial is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time, especially because it reminds me of Walter.


Here's the raccoon commercial. Enjoy.

Parakeet vs. Canada Goose

I have a lot of respect for birds (except for the ones that nest in our attic vents and break the venting mesh). And I have a special place in my heart for the monk parakeets of Connecticut. Though their beginnings are a bit sketchy—some say they’re from a PT Barnum show, and others say they’re from an overturned exotic pet truck. In either case, these green and white parakeets got free in CT. Everyone assumed that a New England winter would kill them off. It didn’t. The parakeets build their nests around the transformers on high power lines—lots of warmth. The problem is their nests can cause fires and power outages. So the power companies are fighting the birds. (I’m rooting for the birds.)

But I don’t respect Canada geese. They plop their big feathered rears right in the middle of the road. I’ve been known to honk and yell. They just stare me down with their black-ringed eyes. Daring me to hit them. Which I haven’t, though the thought has occurred to me.

The other day I was driving home from WalMart when a flock of them were coming in for a landing at a fake pond. Now this pond is very small and the flock was big. And they were coming in too fast, their angle was all wrong, and they were wingtip to wingtip. And I waited for the fiasco. At the last second, the big flock all baffled their wings at the exact same second and settled their derrieres perfectly on the pond, whose surface was now solid Canada goose. And, of course, they gave me their standard I’m-so-superior-to-you Canada goose stares. I smiled. Touché.

I just hope they continue their journey south—maybe they could go to Brazil or Peru. I’m sure there’s a WalMart pond there somewhere. Though maybe the parakeets will fight them for space. I’d love to see that.

Encouragement

The other day I read a blog post that gave me pause. A writer had been castigated by another writer because she was looking for an agent instead of self-pubbing. Now given all the changes in Amazon’s algorithms and how that’s radically affecting indie e-books, it’s pretty foolish to think e-pubbing is the answer to everything. Click here to learn more.

Regardless of what path or paths you decide to choose in presenting your work to the world or even if you write in a notebook and never show it to a living soul, we ought to be encouraging one another.

As I was mulling over the whole situation, I realized how rare it is for someone to encourage someone else. I don’t know if it’s our culture or if it’s human nature, but real encouragement is rare. And I’m not talking about the cheap politically correct “everyone is special” mumbo-jumbo, but real, thoughtful encouragement. Can you remember the last time you encouraged someone else? What about the last time someone encouraged you?

I remember a professor I had in college. Dr. Brown. He was an elderly man who smoked way too much, but he had two rare gifts. First, he was a true genius. The only one I have ever met. Two, he knew how to encourage. He encouraged me. He wrote insightful comments on my papers and exams. He called on me in class and complimented what I had to say. And guess what? I never worked as hard for any literature class, ever. I spent every free hour learning everything I could about critical theory and Restoration Literature, which I hate (except for Tristram Shandy—a marvel of wit that breaks every rule of writing and does it with style). I was ready should Dr. Brown say, “Connie, give me a Hegelian reading of Dryden’s ‘Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day.’” And I would have been able to do it, even though I hate Hegel, dislike Dryden, and the ode—meh. I became a Pamela expert, despite that fact that Samuel Richardson poured every ounce of his prodigious tediousness into the novel. And I did that all because this man encouraged me.

Can you imagine what we could do if we encouraged each other? What about you all? Any stories of encouragement you’d like to share?

Click here to read this week's post on the Screwing Up Time blog.


Click here to read A.B. Keuser's interview of me.

DIY

Are all indie novelists do-it-yourselfers? I am. Maybe I got it from my immigrant mother or my I-can-fix-that father, but I always want to give something a try myself.

When the lawnmower stopped working, I took it apart and moved some wires and pieces around. It worked. My son, who was probably hoping to get out of mowing the lawn asked, “What did you do?” I said, “I’m not really sure, but it works now.”

I got into gardening that way. It seemed to me that if you stuck plants in dirt and watered them, they should grow. It was a little more complicated, but my dendrobium orchid has been blooming since March. (BTW, orchids are so easy to grow. Give them good light, occasional water, and ignore them. They’ll bloom. Then you can pretend they’re a lot of work.)

Brewing beer was a similar thing. Apparently, my great grandmother used to throw a huge pot on her stove and brew. I bought a huge pot and a brewer’s book, and I discovered that homebrew tastes really good.

Recently, I decided to make yogurt. The good stuff is too expensive. So I heated 8 cups of milk to 180, cooled it to 112, mixed in a few tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt with active cultures, and cooked it for nine hours. Afterwards, I refrigerated it. (If you don’t have a yogurt maker, wrap your Dutch oven in towels and let it set for a day or so.) Season as desired. (For a sweet tooth, try sugar and preserves. If you like savory, sprinkle the yogurt with Greek seasoning. YUM.)

Next up, cheese. I want to make Brie and blue cheese.

Tell me, are you a do-it-youselfer? If so, what have you done?

Here’s a photo of me making yogurt.

Author Photo

Once in my life I’ve done a photo shoot. It was for a modeling portfolio—but that is another story and a boring one to boot. Okay, I did do one other shot for my very first author photo, but those photos were taken by my daughter’s friend who was sixteen at the time so it wasn’t intimidating (Thanks, Rebekah, you did a wonderful job.) However, the time had come for a new photo.

We have a friend who’s a photographer. And she was having a special sale on photo shoots. It seemed like a great way to get an author photo and family Christmas picture. (I usually take the family Christmas photo with a cheap camera on a tripod and a timer amid grumbling and gnashing of teeth. And the lighting is always weird with half of us in the shade and half in the sun.)

Having a real photographer sounded great until I discovered an hour before the shoot, that the six of us don’t own clothes in the same color family. Ariel prefers muted colors—greys and browns. I like brighter colors—oranges, greens, and reds. The boys generally have whatever colors were on sale that their grandmother liked and bought them for their birthdays. My bed was covered with clothes none of which worked together. I was nearly panicked, telling myself that I was an idiot for not making clothes decisions earlier in the day/week.

Ariel said, “Let Dad do it when he comes home.” Now don’t cringe. I know most men don’t know a teal from a Prussian blue. But most men aren’t gifted artists. Calvin is. And his specialty is color. He can look at a beige wall, go to the paint store, and bring home the identical color. (Apparently, he “paints” the color in his mind—all he has to do is match it at the store.)

When Cal got home, he glanced at the piles of clothes on the bed and said, “Luke wears this, Matt this, Jake that, Ariel this, you this, and I’ll wear that.”

And..it worked!

Here are a couple of photos. They were taken by the amazing Rachael Venema of Raeven Photography. You should check out her website.