You Have Been Warned...

Recently, my teenage daughter came home from school in a complete tizzy. To shorten a rather long and drama-filled story, the mother of a girl at school she’d been having a problem with entered the fray on Facebook. The mother, without actually naming my daughter, made her opinion on a child clear for the world, or at least her friends, to see.

Now, I’ll be frank. My first reaction was to drive over to this woman’s house and hold her head in a toilet until she relented and removed the offensive post. I am a Texan mother, and we go a bit mad when our children are threatened. But because I had no desire for jail time, or to have video of the incident end up on YouTube, I took a deep breath and calmed down.

Sanity returned, and I looked for a way to calm my girl down. And then it occurred to me: what could this woman really do? What does it really say about her that she would speak ill of a child on her Facebook page? So that’s what I told my daughter.

“She could get me expelled!” she wailed. The history of this melodrama has recorded numerous instances where the other child made up accusations against mine, and a teenager’s reaction to adversity is usually over-the-top, as my daughter was demonstrating.

“Would I let that happen?” I asked her. I looked straight into her eyes while I spoke, letting her see the angry mother bear in mine.

“No.”

“Exactly. Don’t worry about it,” I said back, and she didn’t.

Because Texas women don’t let anyone mess with their children.

Keep Austin Weird

I’ve recently rediscovered Austin’s talk radio stations online, and I’m so grateful.

First, it’s just nice to hear someone else drawl. The Midwest has their own version of a drawl, but it’s not the same thing as a good Texan “y’all”. And people say ‘y’all’ on this station and no one pokes fun at them for it! I find that so very refreshing.

Secondly, I get to hear about Austin’s politics again. Being the state capitol, media is more attuned to details in Austin than the rest of the state. I lived in Lubbock for five years, and while big state government debates were covered briefly, it was nothing like the in-depth probing of the issues I’d become spoiled to while living near Austin. And it doesn’t stop with state issues. Local government, from what the Travis Co. District Attorney said to the latest “green” idea from the current mayor are all discussed.

Which leads me to the most important, biggest, penultimate reason I love to listen to Austin’s news radio station: I feel plugged in again. It reminds me of the atmosphere of the city, which is like no other. Austin is comprised of old-school Texans who can trace their heritage back to the Alamo, (South Austin), to tech-industry yuppies and their half-caff soy lattes, (North Austin), college students who are out to change the world, (University of Texas), and a vibrant and growing community of artists, (SXSW anyone? Or Austin City Limits? Ring any bells?).  This eclectic mix of cultures has always made me think Austin is Texas’s little NYC, only friendlier.

I love Texas, from the vast flatlands in the panhandle, to the mountains of West Texas, to the quiet pine forests in East Texas, and to the vibrant Mexican-American culture in South Texas. Austin takes all that is unique and beautiful in this great state and squeezes them into its borders. That is what I most miss, here in Indiana. 

And Tex-Mex.

I’d kill for some enchiladas I didn’t have to make myself, but that’s a rant for another day. 

"Rookie"

Have you ever been in the middle of a project and realized you're not really improving anything anymore?

That's where I am right now.

I spent so much time trying to finish the book that I never really devoted a lot of thought to what needs to be done after it's finished. I knew the next step was revision. I knew, from hearing it from others, that revisions were hard. I had the idea that it was a purging thing, like getting rid of your favorite tee shirt because it's been your favorite for so long it's now thin, holey, and stretched beyond recognition: hard, but necessary. And you're supposed to feel better when they're over.

So now I'm in a bit of a predicament. Yes, I know some of the things I need to tackle in my first draft. Big things, like timeline discrepancies I know I have to deal with, are obvious to me. But beyond that? I don't have a clue what I'm doing. I'm great at line editing. But I know there's a great big "middle" between fixing the timeline and line editing that I just don't know about.

I should probably end this post now. My "rookie" is showing, and it's embarrassing.

'Flew' Is For Geese... Not Fingers.

I'm back!

I'd like to say I've been super busy with all kinds of interesting hobbies or requests for my expertise that have eaten up all my time to blog, but I can't say that, so I won't.

So instead I'm going to confide something to you that has troubled me for a while now.

I was overwhelmed this morning by an insidious foe that has haunted me for years. I've spent my writing life running from it. I hide when I feel it stalk closer. I close my eyes and hope that helps.

It usually does.

Who is this fiend? My nemesis, the verb "flew".

I'm tired of hiding my eyes from it, so now I'm taking a stand. I'm here to say that 'flew' is done as a verb, unless you're writing about geese.

No more "my eyes flew across the letter..." I mean, how creepy is that? Think of the image. Ew. The same goes for "fingers flying across a keyboard..." yuck. No amount of bleach can erase that image from my head when I read that.

And I'm tired of people "flying down the stairs," isn't 'falling' more appropriate in that sense? Unless you're Superman, that is.

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the struggle a writer feels to convey urgency in a scene. Sometimes simply running won't cut it. I think it's the sheer number of times I've seen this done that troubles me so. It has become a stand-by a writer uses to push through a scene, and I'm beginning to think it's just laziness.

It's more appropriate to use the word 'flew' in this sense: "If I read a body part flying across something one more time, my eyeballs will fly out of their sockets out of sheer frustration."

C'mon people. Get a thesaurus.

Hello 2013!

Everyone asks what your plans are for New Year's Eve, it's polite conversation for people to make at the checkout in the grocery store. But to me it's not polite, it's annoying. I'll tell you why.

This time around, it was 2013 for about seven minutes before I realized it was 2013. And I missed the famed countdown, (on my TV at home), because I was doing dishes.

Yup.

New Year's Eve isn't a big deal around my house. Some people say Valentine's Day is a just a trumped-up holiday created by Hallmark, (and I agree, to an extent,) but it's nothing compared to the over-inflated, over-the-top hubbub around New Year's Eve. I see it kind of like a good Catholic might view Mardi Gras: one last hurrah before you have to start behaving.

People use the start of a new year to make all kinds of promises to themselves about their future behavior. I was real tempted to make all kinds of rash promises to myself about when I'll have revisions done, and when I'll start querying. And I may sit down tomorrow and come up with some deadlines for myself.

But I sure as shootin' won't call them "resolutions." Resolutions wear off. Conviction to a resolution will wane, and by February the majority of people have given up. (Just for fun, see how packed the nearest gym to your home is for the next week. Check again the first week of February.)

A deadline is something serious. A deadline can't be missed, or there will be consequences. Now, since I don't really have a job as a writer the consequences are self-imposed, but they're still there. No celebratory Starbucks coffee is a bummer, and driving by the coffee shop when I pick up my son from school is a reminder to me: Get this done, or no white chocolate mocha for you!

I won't make resolutions, I'll set deadlines for 2013. Deadlines have teeth, and if something with teeth is  bearing down on you, you move your butt.

Happy New Year, and may 2013 be productive!