How to torture your favorite writer

THIS IS OLD – BUT THE PRINCIPLE STANDS

I haven’t advertised in ages, because I haven’t figured out exactly how to do it when you write in a 1) smaller niche (mainstream love story), that is 2) usually NOT indie (and you write indie), and are 3) slow (so there won’t be another book for readers for a while longer).

As an expected result, sales are slow (but someone bought a paperback this month – Yay!).

And, under certain conditions, you can SEE a reader take your book out of KU and read a few pages (first yellow bar – around 10, maybe 11 if the next bar was right after midnight).

And then read a few pages every once in a while.

From a later graph and adding all the page reads (PC is just under 400 pages), I think the reader finished by May 19th.

Slow writers take our encouragement where we can get it

But it is amusing to watch a graph like this one (and the speeding up at the end) go by when you are doing your daily check.

And to decide what you’re going to assume about the reader (since you have no data but the few points on the graph, which you assume come from the same borrow) based on NO OTHER INFORMATION.

In this case, I assumed a busy life, and a few pages read at bedtime by someone who KNEW they had to get up in the morning to work. Fair enough?

READERS owe writers NOTHING

I will say that as many times as necessary.

Once the book is on the open market, buying – or borrowing from KU – is more than enough for a reader to give the writer.

At that point, we hope they will enjoy it.

Anything else, a rating, a review, a recommendation – is above and beyond, and a gift.

If a reader buys the paper book, we usually don’t even find out if they read it unless a review shows up (these can really make your day; the absence is just normal reader behavior, because few review).

Between the reader and the writer

This has been the contract (a one-way contract) almost forever: I will read.

Going to the next level of writing a fan letter was very rare, even in the olden days.

Doing anything else other than having a warm feeling for the experience (if that happens) nowadays is as rare.

When you see a book with many reviews, it is usually because the book sold many copies – and the usual percentage (tiny) of readers left their impression.

Occasionally, a very good (or very bad) book may solicit a higher percentage – meaning it hit readers in the gut.

Torture away

Writers don’t expect much feedback

Our readers are mostly not writers – they are the people we hope to serve entertainment to.

But it is possible (probably unconsciously) to torture your writer – by proving you can put the book down, over and over.

If you need to do that, please go ahead. It does require you borrow the book from Kindle Unlimited first – and then read it a tiny bit at a time.

Know that the torture is even better because Amazon pays authors not when the book is borrowed, but as the pages are read.

You’re welcome.

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PS: I’m going through my files of draft posts I never finished to see if any still tickle my fancy. This one did.

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Creating and maintaining tension below the surface

BOOKS ARE NOT WRITTEN FOR THE WRITER

You’d think by now this would be obvious: the writer is the FIRST reader, but not the INTENDED reader.

Because writing is a split-brain activity, it is easy to forget that what bothers the writer may not bother the READER, by design.

And you don’t want to go to where things bother the reader.

Annoy, make uncomfortable, show up, irritate – all good words of what the writer should do to the reader – which is SHAKE THE READER UP.

Get under the reader’s skin. Make the reader think. Create a discombobulated feeling in the reader that can only be fixed by the reader changing.

All those are good – but bothering the reader means the writer did something wrong.

And this is where the split personality is required:

I have just written the final two scenes in a chapter.

They were hard to write. There is a lot going on sub rosa. By the end of the book, these two characters will loathe each other.

And right now they are thrown together in an unexpected way, with no warning to either.

But the rules of polite society apply, and they must be civil, even cordial, to each other for a period of time that may be up to two days long.

And one would very much like to get something the other has.

So the scenes are currently driving me a little batty

because the surface must be unruffled – at this point in the story there is no basis for which one person can truly dislike the other.

Which bring me back to the title of this post: Creating and maintaining tension BELOW THE SURFACE.

And the words I put on the graphic:

Books are written

for the READER

To remind myself that, when it’s all over, I have to do better than the street repair team in my previous township. I need the surface to look like the original street, not the repaired street.

A repaired street has a visible patch of asphalt or concrete – of a different color.

A repaired street patch may create a dip in the road as the subsoil settles.

A repaired street show where the damage was.

But a book can’t show where the choices were made

A novel must be seamless.

The scenes must flow.

The reader must be able to know a great deal of why the scene is happening now – as she reads it.

And the writer is not allowed (not by my standards) to stuff description and exposition into a scene just because there is space.

It is work to get it right – it would be much easier to just relax the standards and throw something the reader might need later into the present scene.

But here’s the rub: readers know. And when they run into chunks of exposition, they skip or skim.

And then they don’t find out what the writer was supposedly trying to tell them anyway.

I really, really hope I didn’t do that

I’ll find out when my first reader lets me know; I’ll find out when reviewers speak their minds.

I think I managed it.

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How to profit from a plot hole

A PLOT HOLE CAN BE AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER

And I’m not going to tell you the size or the significance of the one I just wrestled into submission. Just how.

It’s in Chapter 29 of the WIP, Pride’s Children NETHERWORLD, the second volume in the trilogy, and you will have to remember this AND suss it out yourself when NETHERWORLD is available.

That’s not the point.

The point is that I’m pleased as punch with myself for finding out how to deal with one, and my struggle may save another writer some angst – and amuse readers who wonder if this ever happens and how writers deal with them.

Plot holes

It is almost impossible to invent a world – and not run into a few.

In fact, in the world I’ve built, I’ve been surprised time and time again when the plotting does work out, or a small change in a relatively unimportant date or fact renders everything copacetic again.

Because you do know writers make an awful lot of fiction up out of whole cloth, right?

No matter if ‘inspired by a book’ or idea (even fuzzier) decorates the credits of a new movie, or if ‘inspired by characters created by’ [name] is attached.

And if it did actually happen, there may even be apparent plot holes.

But if it didn’t, well, a writer does the best she can, and leaps into the void with a ribbon between her teeth attached to – a plot.

It depends on when you find the plot hole

If before you write a word, and you can’t find a way to get around it, you can dump the whole project.

But that usually entails dumping a lot of good stuff. Just with a plot hole or two in it somewhere.

However, your options are more limited if you find a reasonably-sized one (for your character’s definition of reasonable) in the middle (almost literally) of the second volume of a trilogy, and it is supporting a plot point you are not willing to change.

What to do, what to do?

First of all, OWN IT

Do not leave it there for an astute reader to find it, not if you’re planning to leave a legacy to the ages.

Readers blab. They leave reviews (if you’re very, very lucky). They tell each other. And for some reason feel they have to mention it when they recommend it: “It’s a lovely book, you know, but it could never happen because it has a few little flaws…”

And, if you’re an extreme plotter like me, it’s plausible – it’s just that it isn’t quite possible or true.

Or the author would have noticed it sooner, and taken care of it in development or plotting or outlining or the calendar or… You get the idea.

So I did what I do with a lot of problems:

I gifted it to a character

And that’s where I’m rubbing my hands with glee.

Because now the CHARACTER has to come up with a solution. And once the CHARACTER has a solution, they have to deal with the problem of whether to cough it up right away and admit they screwed up, or to keep a good and almost logical solution tucked away in their head to be used if someone else notices.

And you then get extras: You can have them get away with it – for a while.

And have it bothering them.

And then, if you’re evil enough, you can have it come up at a most inconvenient time, force them to do their little song and dance, and let another character realize they’re not being entirely truthful.

Which has been kind of delicious.

And is exactly what I mean by profiting.

My readers will tell me

If it worked.

I’m assuming most of them will not be through my gleeful blog posts about writing – I can think of nothing worse to destroy the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ than lifting the skirts and showing readers the machine under the table.

But what I’m hoping will happen is that any reader who happens to notice that little glitch will also notice that somewhere very soon, before they got too worried by it, a solution popped up to take care of the problem – and the itch is scratched.

And they hurry along, reading, to see what other little problems might crop up – as that is the way of fiction, problem/solution/problem/solution… until the final happily-ever-after, mostly, solution at the end.

So that’s what I spent the last three days on

And a couple of thousands of words in my notes.

And images and calculations and links to places where I got my data from Mr. Google.

And then this tiny little hand-polished paragraph which will get read, absorbed, and left in the reader’s wake.

After all, one must tell one’s readers the truth most of the time, so they will not notice the occasional little lie we have to sneak in – or this wouldn’t be fiction.

On to the next author problem!

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If you’re a writer, have you ever had this particular little problem?

If you’re a reader, have you ever noticed this problem? What did you do?

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Scene not working? Change something MAJOR

NOVEL SCENES HAVE A PURPOSE

They are not just ‘something that happens next.’

There are many different ways to accomplish that purpose, but there’s a tendency, as a writer, to have things happen in a particular way, and to have that way get stuck in the chute.

The more things a scene needs to accomplish, the longer it may end up needing to be.

But writers’ brains have the same habit of getting stuck behind the wrong idea as any other brain. And maybe my ME/CFS brain does this more than most writers’ brains because change is so difficult for me.

When it isn’t gelling

So the first thing to do when a scene isn’t writing itself, after a reasonable amount of time expended trying, is to separate the essentials from the window dressing, and consider finding a different way entirely to enact the required elements – and change the window dressing to something else entirely.

A scene could be huge, with many characters interacting.

Or a scene can be small and intimate, or small and intimate within a chaotic outer setting, or the kind of scene where it isn’t until the end that you realize a whole bunch of things have come together.

A paced novel will have all kinds of scenes, to avoid monotony, to keep the feeling of surprise and discovery going.

But few scenes have only ONE way to accomplish their task.

When I started writing this post, I had just made a deceptively small change – the hour of the scene went from 4pm to 8pm – taking it from mid-afternoon to sunset – and was able to unstick a line of attack completely. The number of participants also dropped – from crowd scene to two principals.

Lawrence Block says that when things get stuck and you don’t know what to do next, you should bring in a man with a gun.

That’s a pantser’s move.

I’m an extreme plotter, so that’s not really an option.

But one of my writing guides, Armando Saldaña Mora’s Dramatica for Screenwriters has a whole section on how to change the scope and size of a scene, and still accomplish that scene’s purpose. Which is the real advantage of my kind of plotting, where everything has a place.

Changing a scene completely is often a budget move for movies

If the purpose is for the Protagonist to say goodbye to the Antagonist, say, the scene can be large and showy and done in front of hundreds of extras – or it can be small and intense and private and done in the back seat of a taxi (“I coulda been a contender” speech, Marlon Brando, On The Waterfront). Where the taxi isn’t even really moving.

It is something only the novelist will know in a novel, where words themselves are relatively cheap, even if producing them costs blood: was this scene completely different at any point before publishing?

Changing the scene in NETHERWORLD

You don’t have to choose between ‘telling’ and ‘showing’ a scene; there is more than one way to ‘show.

The original scene was going to happen while ON the set of Opium, filming in India, where the main character would watch the filming for an hour or so, and then form her own conclusions about the undercurrents in the cast.

It works much better without the actual filming being observed, and the scene purpose is fulfilled in an even more intense way. Since the details of filming were background in PURGATORY, the reader gets the idea – and I don’t have to repeat it.

The result:

• An unstuck scene
• A better scene
• A scene between two main characters, instead of one with many to track
• Advancing the plot
• Better dynamics
• Definitely better dialogue

So if it isn’t working, and you’ve spent enough time that it should have gelled by now: consider that you can use a lot of what you already figured out – but reframe how the reader is going to learn what you need the reader to know.

Be bold; try something different.

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Really different.

Have you done this?

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Shopping patterns change with the circumstances

NORMAL WHEN IT’S NOT NORMAL OUT

A flyer from Kohl’s in the mailbox touts a sale March 25-29. It’s a surreal reminder or normality – advertising flyers are set up, and the sales decided, months in advance. The products, seasonal, have to be ordered, decisions made about what clothes people will need in the next buying period, Easter – it appears, from the elegant children’s clothes.

While some incomprehensible person in Washington says grandparents should die for commerce, instead of being around for the grandchildren to hug for the Easter dinner in their cute new duds. And Italy reports considering that breathing support won’t be available for those under SIXTY. New low.

We’re not that far out from normal

It is very different, depending on which pictures you see in the news – between the photograph showing a packed Bondi Beach in Australia or Daytona Beach in Florida and ones showing a piazza in Rome more empty than it’s been in years – but it hasn’t really been that long yet.

A few months since the first cases in Wuhan, China, to total lockdown in Davis, California, for the safety of old folk for whom there will not be enough ventilators in local hospitals.

The SCALE has shocked the world, but far too many people still don’t believe it.

And the more optimistic among scientists, and especially among politicians, are hoping ‘normal’ comes back within a couple weeks, wherever they are, so that we don’t mess up the economy too much for their taste.

We’re still in the world of Just-in-time inventories

Of factories with so much capacity they can produce what is needed with a quick turnaround – and of inventories so low doctors and nurses are re-using face masks usually disposed of after each patient, and re-using them for many, many patients.

We’ve gone from crowded shopping in grocery stores where there are SALE! signs everywhere, to standing six feet apart in the checkout line.

And we don’t know which patterns will last, and which will be gone the minute there is a vaccine to protect from COVID-19.

We’re feeling mental whiplash.

A month ago…

Having the husband head out on the facility bike to do some grocery shopping was a bit of exercise tacked onto a chore…

…Now it is a death-defying adventure into a post-apocalyptic landscape.

Getting together in a small group in the Piano Lounge to sing folk songs…

…Not even allowed because the room is small and enclosed, even if people stay six feet apart from each other.

Going to the pool was almost a social activity…

…And now we are being supervised like children by management to make sure no one uses or touches anything.

Online shopping was a convenience

For us, without a car yet in California, it was so much easier to have things delivered that I think we had a package a day delivered to the front desk!

Now it’s an adventure in finding a time slot in which your local grocery store can deliver food and TP (assuming they have some) after you’ve filled in a very detailed form online with many restrictions – and for which someone else will choose your ripe bananas.

As a shut-in, basically (little energy and little mobility are a real deterrent to shopping in stores), I’m used to the concept.

But everyone else is still trying to wrap their mind around what can and cannot be done, at the same time they wonder why on earth they would even buy an Easter dress.

Welcome to my world, sort of

And I wonder if you will have been changed permanently by your visit, or whether you will just have a few vacation photos tucked away in a virtual album somewhere.

Try to remember – and have some understanding of what the permanent residents deal with daily.

I STILL don’t see much of a plan for the NEXT time we get a novel virus.

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Stay well. Read books. Get around to those projects.

If you survive… what will you have to show? As I tell myself to stop watching the news and get back to NETHERWORLD. It isn’t writing itself, but we did have a good day.

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The national safety depends on cooperators

Family visit during coronavirus scare

HOW TO VISIT OLDER RELATIVES SAFELY

Almost looks like Italy, doesn’t it?

No reason you can’t visit – but you can’t come in. My neighbor across the entrance court caught my eye because she was out on her balcony. I thought she was getting some fresh air, and was about to go out and yell Hello! when I noticed the pickup truck and the younger women below.

There is NO substitute for face-to-face human contact, preferably with hugs and touching (many aging people never get touched except by caretakers), but this will do right now.

Video conferences are next best – but I love to see her people making the effort to come see her.

I don’t want my daughter in San Francisco to come do this – it was a SHORT visit – but I’m guessing these visitors came from Davis itself, or somewhere close, and thought to stop and cheer our resident up on their way around town for errands. Very thoughtful.

Social connection in the age of social distancing

I hope to be able to use the indoor therapy pool in the times they’ve selected (during which we recalcitrant disobedient old people will be supervised by staff to ensure proper social distancing). I’ve sent an email off to the staff member who will be the enforcer.

The people here brought this on ourselves! We got a frantic memo yesterday from the director saying residents AND staff have been ignoring the 6 ft. rule. Shame on us!

So now we will be supervised – better than nothing, by far.

I’ve been telling other people for over a week to maintain their distance, but others have not. Sigh.

It will be nice to talk to someone other than the spouse in person.

I think they want us not the use the restrooms or the dressing rooms by the pools (if I’m quoting the memo right), which is just doable. I’m wondering if they’ll allow people into the hot tub one at a time!

That’s the news from Lake URC

Where all the women are strong, the men are nice, and there are no children (points for getting the reference).

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Stay well! Stay away from other people, but not too far.

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Writing time!

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Social connections in isolation time

Many days later – still hanging in there

PATIENCE AND BEAUTY FROM A FRIEND

This isn’t new for those of us who, because of chronic illness and/or disability, don’t get out much, but social connections (even more precious to us) are necessary.

This community has gone from a vibrant group with many things going on every day, so many that it is often hard to pick which to go to, to a group of individuals and couples spending all day long in their apartment, mostly without communicating in person with others.

Including the staff who now bring our food, and leave it on the ledge outside our door sometime in the dinner hour. We open the door after waiting a bit (so they have moved on), and yell, “Thanks!” down the hall.

They’re still sorting the details out

The little things matter a lot. Last night was the first time they have picked dinner and left it outside our door – and it was the St. Patrick’s Day party dinner – and the corned beef was so salty I could not eat it. That’s exactly the kind of thing you might not think of, but if you look forward to it all day, and it’s inedible, your one tiny social contact for the day is tainted (I had a cookie from the freezer and some leftovers to compensate).

Tonight the selections were a wee bit odd, and they didn’t bring the milk – I wonder if they’re having trouble figuring out a system, since they asked about 200 apartments for a card with preferences.

Once we have a better understanding of their part, we can get a few outside supplies. We feel strongly about not throwing away food, always have, so before I eat a meal, I ask the husband what is oldest or needs eating first – and feed myself from those choices.

We have set up zoom for family meetings

We missed the family vacation last year, and will miss it again this year, but it is important for us to do the kind of gabbing we do when we get together.

We have downloaded and tested Zoom, which is used for meetings in businesses, and will let you do short home versions for free. Three of us tested it out today because the husband is on the newsletter staff, and they’re going to use it here instead of meeting in person.

Find a way to talk to family and friends, and, if you can do technology (Facetime, Whatsup, Skype, Messages…), do the video versions. It is a huge leap from text to audio, and a bigger one to video, for nuance, expression, body language, and everything except smell and touch. I have always preferred video – so I could really tell how the kids were.

Connect and reconnect

Those friends you’ve been meaning to send a Christmas letter to for years? Call.

The ones you never get around to in your family? Email.

The birthday person turning 21 who can’t go celebrate at a bar? Commiserate with a card and a promise for later.

It doesn’t take much to make someone happy – and now you have the time if you’re sheltering in place.

Especially important to have done this if for some reason, you are the one who doesn’t make it.

And thanks to all my old friends who are reaching out to comment – love you all.

Thanks for the tulip, Diane.

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Finding readers who must be yours

DEMOGRAPHICS IS NOT THE WAY TO YOUR FANS

I HAVE BEEN WRACKING MY BRAIN since I got the idea for Pride’s Children. In the year 2000.

Because marketing is consumed by demographics – to women of a certain age and income; to children; to men who own pickup trucks.

From SnapSurveys:

Demographics are characteristics of a population. Characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, education, profession, occupation, income level, and marital status, are all typical examples of demographics that are used in surveys.

Mar 12, 2012

Birds of a feather flock together.

I need a different kind of marker

Something that has to do with the kind of reader people are, and the type of books they pick on their own.

When I get the chance to ask, my readers usually have some of the following features:

• They have read a lot, starting in childhood
• They have read classics – for pleasure – and were not forced to; books such as Jane Eyre and A Christmas Carol and Pride and Prejudice
• They’ve read good contemporary books of their times – Rebecca and The Thorn Birds and Gone With the Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird and The Complete Sherlock Holmes
•  Their repertoire often includes good SF and Fantasy, such as The Lord of the Rings and Dune and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and On the Beach

But some of my best reviews have come from older men, and some of my best readers are young women, and my incredibly supportive fan is Marian Allen who is in my general age group.

How on Earth do you call that a demographic?

There are hints

One reader told me he had learned a lot about himself, and would be rereading.

Another has told me he was surprised to be pulled in.

Others have mentioned liking my writing.

Someone wrote:

you have managed the best instance of “the story is not finished, but this segment of it feels finished” that I have ever encountered

Many start, and put it off because they find a density they want to read slowly – and I wonder if they ever get back.

My return visit had me entrapped in Prides Children and I haven’t GOT TIME, but maybe just a little more…supper time… must go…one more section… but just wanted to say its VERY GOOD, and what an ironic and sharp eye you have for le mot juste, and the silence pregnant. Very enjoyable, no sign of the damaged mind but I resonate strongly with your main character’s memory lapses and undefined connections of perfect lucidity once connected for the more lumpen Elise! I have not yet reached her TV appearance but it beckons. [italics mine – the TV appearance is very early in PURGATORY!]

I poke at it with the damaged mind

I wonder why there hasn’t been more recommending to friends who read.

I wonder when Elena Ferrante’s mystique is debunked, and suddenly her work isn’t as good.

I wonder when there should be a niche for disabled/chronically ill authors, with a little bit of slack from the establishment – and they tell me they are not taking indie self-published authors, while there are few in the category who get published by the traditional publishers. A pro bono approach I could submit to.

I wonder when I watch younger, healthier authors putting gobs of time into keywords and marketing and boxed sets and book magnets and publishing more books – and there is no way in h-e-double-hockey-sticks I can do any of that.

In this, my model, if you like, is John Kennedy Toole, who didn’t do any of that, because he was dead. A Confederacy of Dunces was pushed by his mother after he died by suicide, and won a Pulitzer after it attracted (was forced onto) the attentions of an influential writer, Walker Percy.

I need a Mentor, an Influencer, someone with a Voice

And haven’t a clue how to get one.

I need to ‘go viral,’ when that is as intangible as you can get.

I need to do only the writing, and am told over and over that all authors want this, and should get off their duffs.

I think I would do a great deal better on the writing side if I had some confidence in ideas which might pan out – and that I could actually do.

I listen, I learn, I think. I follow, I read, I think more.

I’ll figure it out – or literally die trying. Morbid? Realistic?

I’ve started a hundred tiny brush fires, at great expense in time and effort. One of these days, one will burn down the fences.

And if you’re in one of my categories – or can add to that list – please let me know.

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Thanks to Stencil for the ability to make graphics.

Also let me know if WordPress is causing you grief by putting in ads; supposedly the ones on a desktop go below the posts, but I understand the ones to mobiles can be intrusive.

As close as writing can get

FICTION IS BUT BLACK AND WHITE DOTS

We are getting spoiled by high resolution. Actors now have to worry that every pore is visible to the folks at home. Photos take a lot of storage space – megabytes – because we can, and because we have Terabyte hard drives.

Most of us will never have occasion to use that detail, and we don’t want to write books that are that high resolution, either. Among other problems, they would take forever to read!

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From November 12, 2012:

Digitizing reality: the fictive approximation

Even in the most connected and most fluid writing, choices have to be made. Which sentence follows which, which word is best. The basic principle of fiction is that reality cannot be duplicated, merely suggested.

When a painter uses a few strokes of red to suggest a roof, she must trust that the viewer will infer internal beams, two-by-fours, and nails to support that roof from the fact that the roof does not fall. Worse, even ‘fall’ is a suggestion: the painter does not ‘do’ gravity: the unsupported roof will not slide off the bottom of the page when the canvas is hung.

Reality is fine-grained

Reality consists of unimaginable numbers of tiny events, linked together by time, infinitely stretching in all directions. Fiction picks the stars in the skies as points, leaves us to connect the stars with planets, deep-space debris, and light.

So it doesn’t really matter which points are chosen, in some sense, because the same writer, on the same day, could select an entirely different set, and still tell the same story.

Beginners to digitization are astounded at how few black and white pixels it takes to express the iconic Abraham Lincoln. But even those few points are a random choice, because starting at each of a million different points, there are a million similar-but-not-identical digital Lincolns.

But what level of detail is REQUIRED for fiction?

It is only necessary to cover enough of the central story, at the chosen level of detail. “Wedding dress for sale. Never worn.” is in some sense exactly the same as “Great Expectations.”

What a writer strikes for is balance. For each type of story there are conventions, rough guidelines. An action thriller which spends half of its 300,000 words in interior monologue of its twisted dark protagonist is a deliberate contravention of the genre’s best-selling exemplars. It CAN be done, but must be written exceedingly well, and even then the audience for it will not be all thriller readers – because most of them want taut action-packed, skimpy-on-details, fast-paced writing with its interior monologue limited to “They killed my wife and child and now they will pay.”

Possibly, if done well, the audience will broaden to include readers who like longer stories, who appreciate the extra background, the crossover effect. A gamble. Done deliberately and competently and in a controlled manner, it may pay off. May.

How do you sketch a good-enough approximation?

I come by these thoughts today free of charge as a short scene–which had completely halted progress for over a month–suddenly resolved and melted into ink on page. I stopped trying to find better words to do what I was doing. I realized the words already there were a good digitization of the reality I was trying to portray–and that there is not a single perfect version of this scene which I have to locate somewhere out in the ether.

Life, complicated, millions-of-tiny-pieces life, had been getting in the way. I’m amazed at how few words needed changing, how few words I needed to add to what I already had. It is a good-enough version of the story reality. It isn’t missing any key pieces.

Time limits how much a character can do, say, or think

Finally, I could experience it from the inside of the head of the character whose point of view it was. In a few places, I added what she thought and felt to what she experienced–just a few touches restored that sense of balance.

I changed the places where I showed through: where her words would be different from mine, I chose hers. Mine were better–hers were hers. She comes from a part of me I disallow sometimes, with my over-educated, over-read self-image. She WANTED–in a way I rarely allow myself any more. I let her speak instead of censoring her–and the scene finished itself.

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I love writing, because I get to choose the level of detail needed to tell the story my way.

My happiest readers will be those who like my granularity, somewhere between Hemingway and Rosamund Pilcher (or worse, Proust), whose brain needs the same distance from the subject. And it doesn’t hurt if they like my stories.

How much detail do you need?

Plot quirks as much as holes

AND HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?

‘Missing’ is an odd concept

For a visual or graphic artist, there a billions of colors – digitize the spectrum as finely as you like to get as many distinct numbers as you need.

Of course, you can’t use them all.

And at some point the human eye can no longer distinguish between the shades.

A complete scene is another odd concept

That’s where the art comes in, for each writer, in deciding how much stays, how much is irrelevant (including whether or not to use scenes at all, but that’s getting a little too experimental for me).

From January 2013 comes an answer that turned my brain topsy turvy:

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Upending plots to find holes

I had an interesting experience recently which gave me ideas about finding – and solving – plot problems. In the course of playing too many games of Free Flow on DH’s new iPad mini, I solved all but a small set of the 14 x 14 levels included. It irked me that, no matter how many times I went back to the remaining small unsolved set, even starting completely from scratch, I couldn’t find the trick to the solution.

A minor problem, you say. Agreed. But games can be useful (I know – this doesn’t justify all that time spent gaming) – or humans wouldn’t have invented them, and wouldn’t get so much stroking from them, so much pleasure, that they can become addicting. There is a sense of completion that releases endorphins and other good brain chemicals when a puzzle is solved.

So, I continued to come back to this set of unfinished puzzles.

But it wasn’t until, in desperation, I turned the iPad upside down that I found my answers: even though I had started each level from scratch, the orientation of the dots (you are trying to connect each colored dot with its mate in such a way that all squares on the board have a color in them and NONE of the squares is EMPTY) had locked into my brain prematurely, and I literally could not see them in a different way.

It actually HURT my brain to turn the iPad upside down, and to view each puzzle WRONG – but in a new way.

I told myself anything that made my brain hurt must be good for it (on the theory I hold that the brain is a muscle-like object, and it must be exercised).

I deliberately tolerated the stress – and quickly solved the remaining puzzles I had been struggling with for more days than I care to admit. Immediately. The skills I had developed for this particular little game had settled too soon into working on the default orientation – a technique that got me successfully through most of the 750 puzzle levels that came with the game – but not all.

I’m doing something similar with the scenes I’m revising now:

I have text for these scenes, text that I like, and a flow through the plot that strokes my brain (we all write, first, for ourselves), but it isn’t good enough.

Revising in place, just taking the words that are there, the order of words in a scene, and making them better, is good and useful and satisfactory – after all, I worked hard to write them originally.

But it doesn’t solve all the problems. I’m stuck, in some scenes, with a feeling that I haven’t done my complete job, that there are unexplored empty ‘squares’ on the grid. A feeling that if I notice a tiny void, a reader will, too. My brain hurts.

But the reader can’t fix the problem. That’s my job. If my writing isn’t satisfying me, it has no business going out into the world.

So I’ve been taking the elements of a scene, and going back to ‘start.’ Rearranging the order, re-thinking, re-visioning.

Letting my brain hurt.

Turning the scene completely upside down, asking beginner questions: What does this scene do? Why is this scene in the book? What can the reader only learn here? Even, Why the heck did he do that?

I’m hampered by the fact that I can – as an end result of many years of reading – turn out clean copy that LOOKS finished with relative ease. And once it is fixed in black and white on the page, it is very hard to question what looks ‘published.’

It takes time. It isn’t strictly necessary.

But if I identify the plot problems – the little bugs which irk the brain – those empty squares – and solve them, I get the endorphins. And a scene I have to admit is vastly better.

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The interesting part has been that I have found extremely few places where I want to go back and change something in PURGATORY – which I just finished rereading.

Apparently, once I’ve got it, it locks in, and then it’s real, and I don’t need to go back. I didn’t think it would be so.

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How about you?

If you’re a writer, do you find a strong stop for each scene – or do your scenes make you want to get out the editor?

If you’re a reader, can you tell when something is finished?

Just curious.

Live readers are rare for hermit writers

THERE’S A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

And over the last week, I’ve had an experience you would have thought had happened many times before: I had a conversation with a live reader. In person.

Two, in fact. Both at my new abode.

One woman, one man.

The fun part? They’re in the same walking group here (no, I am not in it), and have been talking about me. Or my book, which is highly correlated. I wish I could listen in!

Different perspectives from each of them

One liked it, and has no clue where it’s going, but has decided what cannot be allowed to happen. Huh.

The other liked it, and seemed to connect – and asked me how I made Andrew’s Irishness work. I told her: hours of listening to radio from County Galway, and piles of notes – and a very light hand.

That last bit, a light hand, is critical for so many things in writing.

Yes, there is a lot of research in a novel like mine.

Yes, there is an entire version of 2005/2006 where you’d swear (I hope) that this actually happened.

Yes, like many writers I’m writing about things I haven’t experienced in person, and places I may not have been.

But that’s my job, and my other job is not letting the reader see it.

It can’t be in the story. Readers can’t find themselves in the middle of exposition: the info dump.

That last part is important to me. I want a reader to acquire the story without having to work at it – and I seem to have succeeded reasonably well: I could tell by the questions of both that there were no rough edges they had cut themselves on. Phew!

As I explained, I have not allowed myself the luxury of having a character conveniently think – at a time he or she would never do it – some piece of information that the reader needs. You won’t necessarily get, while reading, what some of those pieces of thought  are for, but you should understand what triggered the thought, and file it away automatically, because. I will connect the dots for you later.

Structure

And I got to say a few words to my new friends about a subject dear to my heart: plotting.

Because fiction is not real life. Even in memoir writing, the memoirist has to be highly selective – space limitations. And pity for the boredom of a reader if given everything.

And fiction has a purpose – which real life has, but not in neat chunks.

I used my skyscraper metaphor: if you aim to build high, and expect people to be able to live in an aerie with a gorgeous view, you have to plan the plumbing from the ground up to the very top: water and waste management cannot be added where convenient, as you go. Those pipes gotta connect.

And how having a solid structure in place – knowing characters, plot, setting, and timeframe, and especially why – allows me, an extreme plotter, the freedom of figuring out how. And the fun.

Conclusion: my notes are useless

I thought I’d get a pile of reactions and write them down for pondering later – so I brought a notebook and four pens (believe it or not, the first three didn’t work).

And scribbled as we went.

And found out later that I had written nothing of value.

Because the interaction itself, the pleasure of being allowed to talk about my work (while being very conscious of what I looked for when homeschooling my kids: the glazed-over eyes), the pleasure of letting someone else talk about my work interfered with coherent note-taking.

As, on reflection, it should.

The hard parts

Not talking too much.

Not correcting a reader’s perception.

Not letting out clues about where a topic will lead.

Not telling what I’m eventually going to show.

Stopping.

And still not having the right to use my own mental energy to get back into the fray, because I have to be patient a bit longer, and get the basics of life tidied up (and new things keep coming along – that’s not going to stop)…

Soon. Very soon.

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A nice extra: explaining in person how important review are.

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And… it’s time for our wonderful organizer to be here.

Peace out.

Question for discussion: the in-person connection between writer and reader. It is rarer than you think. Have you had it?

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PS The ebook of Pride’s Children: PURGATORY is on sale for $0.99 until I’m solidly back to writing. Encourage the writer.

Where do liebjabberings visitors come from?

SOME DAY THIS WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE

And meanwhile, visitors are welcome from anywhere!

Stop and say hello – comments welcome. I’m going to steal the following from a fellow blogger: I like to have the last word, so you’ll always get an answer. If you don’t, know that I still read your comment – and decided to let you have the last word on the subject (at the end of an exchange, usually).

Things are getting a little less crazy around here.

We went to visit our kids in Boulder, Colorado, and had a lovely long weekend.

Then we came home, and I had an old friend visit for two evenings – she arranged her life to be able to visit, and it was so good to see her again. We go back 50 years+!

And then came the visit to the new, nice dentist – except that he had an emergency, and the total time dedicated to an appointment which was literally across the road came to over four hours – and I get wiped out by long out-of-the-house events.

I don’t care – all these were desirable (I love dentists who don’t find anything needing doing, even when a bit of a porcelain crown cover came off) – and much appreciated visits with loved ones.

I’m getting to the new stuff.

One of the residents here, of the several who have read Pride’s Children: PURGATORY, chatted with me this afternoon about her reactions to it – and has offered to connect me to her book club. Book clubs are wonderful ways to get word of mouth out to serious readers, and I look forward to maybe even visiting some of the many in our new city.

I get so few opportunities to just talk and answer questions about my writing (one tries not to be a pushy author) that it was a real pleasure, as well as good for the soul. She got so many things about the work.

One of my main questions – because it’s a trilogy – is always whether readers were unsatisfied at the end of what is known to be the first volume, and feel cheated in any way. She said no – but she can’t wait for the next one – which is balm to my senses.

She also said she had trouble putting it down, and for someone whose nightly habit is to read a bit with her doggie settled in her lap, and then go to bed, I find it cheering to be unputdownable.

I ordered and received a proof copy from Amazon. Createspace has closed, and the automatic transfer to being printed on demand by KDP (?) has to be checked out. The cover looks fine (except that it says ‘proof’ on it, right through the middle of Kary’s head), but I need to compare the paging, and look for the few errors that have been corrected, and make sure they are using the latest file. Due diligence. Then I’ll see about ordering some replacement copies to have as my pre-move supply has all been given out at our new community.

And the usual small problems.

My .mobi electronic ARC has NOT worked for the last two people I sent it to, which means Kindle changed something, and I need to re-create the file to send out for reviewers. There are few things worse than getting someone to read and review for you, and to send them a file they can’t open!

It is irritating to have to spend energy on something that was working fine. And it means going a long way back, and worrying about the version of Scrivener (I have v3, and haven’t updated to it yet), and figuring out a bunch of things such as Compile for ebooks…

I just found my writing books – I used to have them at my right hand while writing, but haven’t since everything was packed and shipped: what have I missed and will it show in the new scenes?

I still haven’t recovered from last July’s crash.

I can’t remember where I was on so many little details of life. And writing.

But this is the last move

before I finish the trilogy – if I have anything to say about it. And the good Lord gives me life and brain.

Things can only get better – I’m excited at the possibilities, and cheered by finding readers here.

I will get my software, computer, and backups under control. I’ll keep writing, and make the progress I had hoped for from the new digs.

And go swimming.

It was always about the pools.

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Does your future have pools?

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Knit up the ravelled sleave of writers’ cares

FINDING THE PERESTERO

I was just napping.

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care

Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act III, Scene 2

where, apparently, sleave is correct, because:

Macbeth wasn’t talking about the arm of a garment; it wouldn’t really make sense. He was talking about a tangled skein, of silk or other material, which makes perfect sense. And for that, the spelling — which the original author used, correctly – is “sleave.”

Says https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/517.html

The Thesaurus on my copy of Scrivener provides:

unravel verb

1 he unraveled the strands: untangle, disentangle, separate out, unwind, untwist, unsnarl, unthread. ANTONYMS entangle.

2 detectives are trying to unravel the mystery: solve, resolve, clear up, puzzle out, unscramble, get to the bottom of, explain, clarify, make head(s) or tail(s) of; figure out, dope out. ANTONYMS complicate.

3 society is starting to unravel: fall apart, fail, collapse, go wrong, deteriorate, go downhill, fray. ANTONYMS succeed.

pick your favorite for my life right now.

I don’t want you all to think I’ve gone dark.

I’m really just OVERWHELMED (I’ve talked about the two reasons Alan Lakein gives in his book How to get control of your time and your life for procrastinating on tasks; the other is UNPLEASANT). Overwhelmed is better; it yields to lists, and small tasks getting started and a whole slew of other relatively easy tasks; Unpleasant tasks need severe shock tactics some times.

Part of that reason (for being behind on blogging) is that whenever there is the smallest chance that I won’t be interrupted after I corral my brain and get it ready to work, I go to the next step in the next scene in Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD, which is slowly coming along (I’m in India right now!), because that is always my first priority, and the reason I initiated this whole move-to-California in the first place.

I just woke up from the weirdest – but most logical – dream

In my dream, we (which turned out to be my husband and I, not my parents and I) were redoing the flooring in the house in Lindavista, Mexico City (I haven’t lived there since 1969, and was married out of that house in 1975, after which my parents sold it and moved to the country club, a house I only got to visit, not live in).

We are, however, using the blue tile that we’re using for our final (until we need Assisted Living) apartment here at the retirement community in Davis, but possibly only the same color dark blue tile, and the one we’re putting into Lindavista’s kitchen and dining room is linoleum, not ceramic – but linoleum dark blue tile was what we had in the house we occupied in Hamilton, NJ, not in Mexico.

In other words, the brain is trying to make sense of all this upheaval in living places.

To make it weirder, after I find Bill, and tell him that the tile man wants to know where the perestero is, I go off to the back of the house somewhere, and am using the little tea table that here sits between our TV-watching chairs, because it is the perfect place and size for me doing handstands (I keep trying and adjusting my position, each time getting a little higher) – and it feels so good.

This is all at the tail end (tale end?) of a dream

which was part of a 45 minute nap (on the timer), but stretched to 1.5 hours. Because I am so tired.

Yesterday, I literally fought with my brain, sitting in the dining lounge (because that was the only place I could find a clear table) with everything I needed to make scaled floor plan of the place we’re moving to (the longed-for two-bedroom, two-bath) to go with the scale cutouts of all the furniture we brought with us, so that I can tell the movers where everything goes. The brain gave me no help at all.

Because, after more than 1.5 months of accepting the offer of the 2-BR, 2-BA, and me thinking they could never get it finished at this rate before the end of February, so it would be okay to go visit our son in Colorado early in Feb., they suddenly got a move on (haha), and gave us a date of Feb. first.

Which is a Friday. They said we probably shouldn’t move on a Friday, as then the maintenance people here would not be available over the weekend to do such things as hook up the internet and washer/dryer (no, not to each other, but maybe? I hadn’t thought about the possibility until I just typed it).

During the nap, I have told myself to listen for either the phone or the iPhone because I’m waiting for the call back from the movers.

So back to the perestero:

I told the tile guy in that Mexico part of the dream that my dad had let me help lay tile with the blue stuff, though I know that the only time I may have ‘helped’ Daddy lay tile was when we were living in Whittier, and I was five, and I was fascinated how the little tile hexagons were attached on the back by a mesh, and how he was soaking them in a bucket to get the paper backing off. That would have been around 1955. He was, I believe, tiling the shower in the second bathroom of that little house (yup, two bedrooms).

By the way, even though ‘perestero’ sounds like Spanish, and you should pronounce it that way (because that’s the way it was in the dream), it is no Spanish word I ever heard, so I haven’t the faintest idea where it came from. Maybe my sisters will know, if they  read this!

And back to the move

(and here you thought I never would!)

The mover guy comes on Monday at 2pm, January twenty-eighth, to discuss a move I’m hoping will happen Feb. 5,6, or 7 – less than a week later.

We have rescheduled middle child for the last weekend of February, whether we’re unpacked at ALL by then, because that’s the whole point of the CCRC (Continuing Care Retirement Community) concept – you can walk away whenever you like without worrying about plants, house, yard, mail – anything – without coming home to a disaster.

Assuming we can find enough underwear for a weekend, and some of our cold-weather clothes – I’ve been wearing the same pair of sandals almost every day since Aug. 28th, 2018 – as Colorado may have cold and snow. Or may not.

The only thing that will hold up that visit is the government shutdown, and I refuse to tackle that right now (or ever; it’s above my pay grade).

My apologies for the dark blog

Although I must confess that the main reason you’re getting this is that the dream required recording, and I thought it might entertain my patient and reliable readers.

And whoever is reading a copy of PURGATORY in KU: could you please finish? You started Jan. 28th, and I’m on tenterhooks, because right now, you’re the only person I know for sure is reading it. And a review would be lovely if, rather than abandoning it, you are merely taking your time (there was an initial burst of pages over four days, then a gap, and then another burst, and then nothing for a couple of days…).

I would really like to think that, after I get back to writing, there are lovely somebodies waiting for the results.

And how are you?

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Marching off to the carpet store

Grownups with crayons

NECESSARY STEPS ON THE CRITICAL PATH

I figured I’d update my faithful followers and occasional readers on WHY there is not more progress toward Book 2 in the Pride’s Children trilogy.

And reassure you – there has been some progress, which I will write about when the current scene is actually written, because I discovered a new technique (for me), and it dislodged the logjam.

But I’m not actually writing yet because…

I have to focus now on getting out of this temporary place as soon as possible.

Which in practical terms has meant such things as borrowing a box of crayons from Facilities (who got it from the ‘healthcare activity department’) – to decide which colors go where.

Above is the winner.

You’d think they’d have visualization tools in a place where apartments are being renovated for each new set of residents, some nice piece of software with all the floor plans already included, and a quick way to try your choices even for the non-computer-savvy crowd.

But no.

Turnover is significant in a community this large

I hadn’t really thought about what it means to be 96% occupied, but one thing we found was that certain apartments – if you have a preference – may not come up for reoccupation as often as you might need, so there are waiting lists.

Also, a community of this size (and with permanent residents) may have a large number of units turn over every year (around 20, for a rough estimate), and that each of these gets renovated to the taste of the new occupant.

In an ordinary apartment complex, many things are standardized, and the tenants don’t decide what the floor coverings will be, and often have no choice of colors. Management makes changes mostly on its own schedule.

In a different community, one of ownership – houses or condominiums – individual owners arrange for – and pay for – their own choices with individual contractors.

But in a CCRC, management makes the changes according to the new residents‘ wishes. Too many cooks. Many of those ‘cooks’ also think of the apartment they don’t own as if it were their own new house. Many are willing to pay for significant upgrades – because they’re used to having their own way. Which process may also delay the completion of the new units, so the residents can’t move in!

We’re going for the simpler version

Let management do most of what they want – it seems good enough, and we’re easy.

Ha!

But easy or not, we still have to sign off on everything, and it turns out their desire to standardize more from here on (and speed up the turnover of units) is getting a bit of pushback from us because ours is the first apartment of our floorplan in the new system, and we think there’s room for improvement. So we make very logical explanations of why something is better.

And they, wanting new people to be happy, have listened.

So the battle is to make the decisions as quickly as possible – but with foresight and questions and details and…

Meanwhile, we’re occupying two units.

And I desperately want to get back to my writing, especially now that I’ve figured out a path through the maze, but I can’t, in due conscience, live with a faucet which is installed so far back on the bathroom countertop that you can’t move the lever which closes the sink. Or a host of other minor atrocities.

So we move each day a little closer

And I try to have a little more patience, and move things along, but still not end up with a light fixture in the bathroom with naked compact fluorescent bulbs!

So, for your delectation – and in appreciation of your patience and because I haven’t blogged in too long – I give you my crayon drawings.

The colors are the ones we both still like – and will remind us of the home we sold (and which doesn’t probably look anything like that any more).

We don’t like white. Not for floors. They always look dirty, always show up pieces of stuff, always need vacuuming, and require instant action if you spill something so it doesn’t stain permanently. Newer carpeting is better, but I’m still not impressed. White is loved by designers because it artificially makes places look bigger. ‘Artificially’ is the key word.

And you have to watch these people very carefully: so far, every time we’ve had a layout presented to us which solved a problem, and which we now approve of – they have snuck something else in which wasn’t a problem before – and now is. I’m sure that’s a finite problem, and we will eventually lock it in – but we have to watch each new printout for the removal of things we thought we’d already agreed on!

Authority and responsibility should go together, in principle

But this process doesn’t work that way, because there are three parties involved. We’ll be living in the new apartment for the rest of our lifetime’s ability to live independently (a sobering thought), but we’re not paying for most of the renovations – except through the buy-in, but that’s not a direct payment to the contractor.

We have not been given a budget (they like to keep that under their hat), except that they’ve finally given us a number to aim for in the carpeting cost (we’re off to use that information today).

We don’t know exactly what the budget is for appliances – but the facility likes to keep them in certain families because they have spare parts which makes maintenance easier for them (except that they had given us the option of a refrigerator with a water dispenser, which we enthusiastically accepted, and then rescinded it).

I drink a lot of water. I’ve been filling water bottles and putting them in the fridge. Back in NJ I didn’t take the trouble to have the icemaker fixed, and so spent a lot of time filling ice cube trays, and don’t want to be doing either for the rest of my life, especially as I get older and feebler…

And so it boring goes

It should be over soon.

Except then for making sure they do what we thought we agreed to have them do.

Before correcting mistakes gets too costly.

Pray for me, sympathize, and this may happen to you, too, some day – so learn what you can.

And I’ll be back to blogging about something less mundane asap.

Happy to hear your stories of remodeling, especially if I can learn something useful for us now.

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Meanwhile, check the upper right hand column of this blog if you have Christmas presents to select for literate grownup readers.

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Were you wondering where we were

 

THIS IS WHAT ALL THE FUSS IS ABOUT

This is what I moved Heaven and Earth for: to move to a place with a pool. Not just any pool, but one in the same building, and one of four.

And, of course, we moved so the kids won’t have to wait until we’re even older, and then help move Mom and Dad into the old folks home.

Things have changed in the world, and we no longer needed a big house and two cars in the suburbs to bring up a family.

And we were definitely not enjoying life, taking care of said house. Most of our friends are moving – and suddenly our quiet suburban court was no longer the place where we hung out. Not that I’ve been comfortable hanging out outside for years now, since I stopped being able, physically, to do even a half-hour of gardening (I truly didn’t mind pulling weeds) at a stretch. No point in lovely perennials if you never get out of the house.

The saga continues

We’re living in our second temporary quarters of the move.

The first was an Extended Stay America just north of Quakerbridge Mall on Route 1 in central NJ. We were there from the day before the movers took our stuff away (a night we slept two hours at the motel, and then stayed up all night at the old homestead while trying to get everything packed before the movers came.

Not the best method for me – I’d sleep a half-hour, get up to pack for a couple hours, repeat – all night long. I’ve packed that way for ‘vacation’ trips before, and it isn’t pretty. But it had to be done.

But this is much better because we’re at the guest suite until our furniture and boxes arrive at the end of the first week of September (NJ is a long way from California by moving van), and finally starting to catch up on sleep and get hooked into the system here.

The food is too good

Shrimp and lovely no-sugar-added carrot cake for dinner tonight, with a salad someone else prepared – but I can already see we will have to be careful, or the pounds will pile on – and the clothes arriving next week won’t fit!

The hours are a little on the early side for what we’ve been accustomed to, and we’re getting into the habit of being exhausted well before midnight – feels odd to a confirmed night owl, but you don’t argue with dining room hours if you want to be fed.

It took me two days, but I finally had time and energy – dropped the laundry off on the way down, and headed for the pool. For a while.

Then I took a shower in their well-appointed locker room (people don’t usually bother with locks) in the handicapped stall because our unit doesn’t have the seated shower. Let me tell you, I haven’t felt this safe getting clean since we took down the shower doors back in NJ months ago because the agent said the house looked tacky with them (they were old and corroding, but I could lightly hold onto the inside bar for some stability).

I have achieved my goal of avoiding a fall, even thought vertically challenged. We’ll have one of these showers in the permanent 2 BR apartment when we get it, but meanwhile I will take my safe showers by the pool. Falls are a major cause of problems for people as they get older.

So the first stage of the move in is over (we put things in the drawers!), and by the next time I write, we should be in our permanent temporary (1 BR) quarters, waiting to see what becomes available for a 2 BR.

In excellent spirits, if still figuring out where everything is

And you do need to take your keys and ID badge with you every time.

Not completely coherent here, but we are okay, the worst is probably over (except for the move IN coming up, and the second one some time in the future), and everyone here has been so nice.

I have to figure out a better way to send the photos to the blog from the iPhone, too, but too many details to worry about right now, and my cobbled get-arounds eventually work.

So bye for now. More when I have it. Moving is a pain for everyone, I’m sure, but eventually it will all be over.

Can’t wait to get settled enough to write – I’m way behind.

Oh, and the fitness expert/instructor seems awfully confident she can get me walking again. Please pray.

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