Honestly, it nearly skipped my mind. I’ve been so wrapped up in the Stoneage Keyboard – which I’ll be working diligently on this weekend and posting photos of my progress. So here’s chapter 13, such as it is. I was really in love with plot twists and turns, and I’m sure I still am, but for some reason tossing in left turns was a real pleasure for me in this story. That and shower scenes – I don’t know if there’s one in this chapter or not – and they’re basically a writer no-no according to the “rules”, but damn, they were fun to imagine while writing 😀
yabba dabba doh!
Not long ago I came across this funky computer keyboard that someone had made and labeled his Steampunk Keyboard, and I thought that was the coolest thing ! I wanted one so bad, but the man sells them for thousands. I didn’t become financially secure by spending thousands of dollars for a fancied-up computer keyboard, although that’s not to say this man isn’t putting in tons of labor and genius.
It just means unless I build one myself, it ain’t gonna happen.
As luck would have it, this dude generously posts very detailed instructions on how you can build one yourself – all it takes is a keyboard, some eBay savvy, a few power tools and loads of spare time. Well, I have one of those brains that will latch on to something, usually something it has no business latching on to, then be unable to let it go.
Which meant I wanted to try this. His instructions looked reasonable, and I have the power tools. I wasn’t so sure I could find an old manual typewriter, let alone the two required to supply enough keys, and once finding them I was pretty sure I’d have a hard time bringing myself to destroy such beauties. Then there was the metalwork. Steampunk keyboard dude, as I’ve come to call him, fashions a cradle for the keyboard, since he completely dismantles them in the process, and that adds to the overall look.
I can do metal work, sure, but that takes more tools, and loads more time. But I’ll admit, I was giving that serious thought.
Then it hit me – this guy’s already making Steampunk keyboards. The world doesn’t need another one, and what I’d really love is a manual typewriter – not one that I had to destroy to copy someone’s design and turn it into a computer keyboard.
But I couldn’t let it go. There was something calling to me, something about this keyboard that wasn’t letting me go. So I started looking around, and contemplating (all while feverishly writing my novel, I assure you) then I had a thought . . . I don’t have a plethora of manual typewriter keys lying around, but I DO have rocks.
Yeah, don’t we all? No, I mean I have ROCKS. I’m surrounded by my other passion – the lapidary arts. And somewhere in the middle of thinking about this, and pondering out loud with Lori and Pete, it hit me that I don’t need to make a Steampunk keyboard, I need to make a Stoneage keyboard !
tgif
3-day weekend! Yay 🙂 Okay, here are the promised two chapters, since I’m in a good mood, it’s Friday, and it’s also a 3-day weekend and who doesn’t love those? I didn’t look these over, since my brain is fully engulfed in Ether right now – and I’m going to beat Pete and Tori in the Penman Shipwreck.
And by the end of the weekend I’ll have light in my bedroom again 😀
She Shoots, she scores!
Okay, I admit, when I checked the mail tonight and pulled the two credit reports out – then carried them into the house – I was too scared to open them myself. So I waited until my sister got home, and made HER open them up. Turns out —
We’re golden ! 😀
Both of us, perfectly fine. Perfect scores, lovely shiny credit. Absolutely no unauthorized anything – not even any attempts or inquries from any unauthorized outside entity. And I can’t TELL you how relieved I feel right now!
In fact, I’m positively giddy. So giddy, I poured myself some mint bailey’s and chocolate soy milk and I’m going to post not one Friday chapter tomorrow (Friday) but two.
With all the research I’ve been doing, and all the feedback I’ve been getting, I’m completely convinced the phone calls are phishing – and while I’m still going ahead with adding Caller ID to our phones, I’m not worried about these calls. I’ll simply hang up, without saying one word, and file a report online with the FTC after each and every call. Eventually, they’ll stop. And I did learn a lot of valuable information, looking up credit reports, how to get them, how to check them, how to keep an eye on them – I’m better for the unexpected education.
Now I can relax, smile, and just write again! Penman Shipwreck – I’m gonna win you after all 😀
scratch only a chicken could love
Okay, so yesterday I found myself with some time to kill, and I happen to have this novel what needs writin’, so I sits myself down in Starbucks with a double tall soy latte, my beautiful 5-subject notebook and lovely pen – and figured I’d get happy for an hour.
I mean write. That’s what “get happy” means to us writerly type folk. Sheesh – gutter, people!
Anyway, I’m plugging along, feeling quite happy about the Penman Shipwreck, and very happy about Ether. Thoughts fly by my brainly parts about how glad I am to be writing with pen and paper again, and how I must be sure to thank Pete again for nudging me back on this path. I’m thrilled to learn I do still have enough stamina to plug out several pages in a sitting, and using Aspercreme, can manage more that evening. I’ve fallen back in love with leather-bound journals and the idea of jotting down story notes, ideas, even stick-figure representations, maps and such. I feel once again as if I’m delving into my worlds, not just skimming over them in a hovercraft or something.
And, I must say with no small lack of humilty, I’m thinking to myself that my penmanship isn’t all that bad. I get to the top of a page, and while my hand is feeling good and my ink is flowing, I’m even entertaining thoughts that my hand writing is pretty damn good. It’s certainly legible. It’s precise, bold, spaced enough to be easily read. “Yes, by God, I’m going great” I suggest to myself with glee.
About an hour later, with Starbucks having grown way too noisy and annoying for me, I pack up the notebook – back into my handy dandy and much loved Barnes & Nobel book bag – put the pen away in the little pocket, grab my keys and head off home. There, I get comfortable on the couch, open up that notebook to take a quick glance over my beautifully written words, and find – this:
The fuck is that! And who wrote it! Gah!
Luckily for me, I have a Masters in Gibberish, and can transcribe these lines in the evening hours.
Public Service announcement update
Well, I don’t have the credit report yet – it’s due to arrive via the mail by next week. And I’m reaching a slightly calmer state regarding this whole stupid thing. I’ve reported the calls to the appropriate agencies, then this passed weekend I relented and told the rest of my family what was happening, since they were over at the house and we were chatting anyway.
They all agree it’s phishing, or a case of wrong name / wrong number. If they’re a legit collection agency, then they don’t have OR need my social security number. I know, for a fact, that I don’t owe anyone any money. I know, for a fact, that no one’s late bills or overdue notices have been coming to my address. So, if someone out there is pretending to be me, and screwed someone out of a load of money, they don’t have my address – which will make proving THEY aren’t ME quite a bit simpler.
They called again tonight, my sister answered the phone, and this time they asked for Christian W–, to which my sister replied “There’s no one here by that name.” That won’t stop them, though. But I *69’d the number again, it was the same, so I filed reports again with the FTC and Do Not Call Registry.
If nothing else, this has been educational ! I do have one enemy out in the world, but that person is in another country, and would never have known my SS # or how to use it. But if things get nasty, I’ll give that name to the police.
Onward and Updates ! 😀
a word about the NFL playoffs
Crap!
Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap. Damn blizzard !
Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap.
Dammit.
When’s baseball?
Another friday chapter
Okay kittens, we’re officially at the halfway mark, for those of you keeping score. I’m not going to hide behind my Woobie today, since I didn’t even look this chapter over when I was cuting and pasting for the page. Y’all know the score by now, and y’all know I’ve GOT to be a way better writer than this by now. And, y’all know I’m not from the south, and really don’t say y’all.
Besides – and Pete is really thrilled to hear this, so Tori should enjoy it – I have a new shiny keeping parts of my brain occupied during the Penman Shipwreck. Now, that’s not to say I’m not writing ! I am writing. I took a stress-day off the other day, when I posted my Public Service announcement, but I’m back on that pony and kickin’ hard. I know Pete has 2.0 to keep him occasionally off track, and Tori has family too, and stress at work. So this Penman Shipwreck is turning out to be a much more level playing field than I had expected it would be.
Yeah, that’s right, I figured Pete to whup us both! But I think Ether stands a healthy chance. And so does my funky stone-aged keyboard project 😀
Shiny.
public service announcement
Something really annoying, and potentially frightening, has begun happening to me. It’s caused me to do a major amount of research, while I lose sleep waiting to find out if my life is about to be thrown into unwarranted turmoil or not.
And I’ve debated whether or not to even talk about this, but I realized a lot of the information I was researching might not be as well known to others, and perhaps – just maybe – someone out there could benefit from this. So, throwing aside any potential humiliation and in an effort to purge some of this anger that has been keeping me up at night and has kept me from writing for the last few days, I shall tell you my tale.
First I should preface this with a reiteration of this one fact: I have no debt.
buddy, can you spare some change?
I love a new year, have I mentioned that? I think I probably did. I like how it feels like hitting the Reset button, how you get to start over from the beginning and you have all these things to look forward to again. I realize time is a human contraption – and I don’t make resolutions, I think they’re silly. But I do like to look on January as a fresh start, even though it’s when Winter really gets going for us here, I start thinking ahead to Spring an all the things I want to do, like rockhounding and long walks on the beach. Sure, I can do that right now, but I’ll freeze my nipples off.And the changes that I’m about to talk about didn’t really take place in January, they were pushed into motion a little while back, and a little at a time. I’d come to realize I was spending way too much time at Absolute Write, not learning and researching, but just sitting there, staring, for no good reason. I had to get away, and after months of trying it on my own, I realized I needed help. Then the Great Tea Debacle came, and Pete challenged me to a month of self-banning from AW, and I took him up on it. Turns out, that was exactly what I needed. I was forced away, which removed a major portion of my ‘net time wasting, and allowed me to get back to writing and blogging steadily.
Around the same time, I was starting to feel frustrated with my writing. Bored, might be a better word. Everything I was writing was coming out sounding and reading exactly like everything I had written. And in the Great Tea Debacle, I had chosen a sequel to a series that isn’t selling. As a writer, that’s a stupid thing to do. If you can’t sell book #1, you sure as hell ain’t gonna sell sequel #2 or sequel #3. And while it was really a spin-off, introducing all new characters that I was really enjoying, the story itself really had no chance. If you can’t sell a series, why keep writing it?
So I put them aside, those new characters, and that whole premise I’d created because it really does deserve better. It’s a great concept, and they’re fantastic characters, and I’ll go back to them when I can give them the attention they deserve. They’ll no longer be attached to an unsellable series, but have their own playground.
Which brought me to the Penman Shipwreck, and what to do about it. I was frustrated, I was depressed, and more than a little desperate. ‘Round about then, things Pete kept mentioning were starting to stick in my brain. Ideas about handwriting, about changing, about finding new ground. I was realizing I needed a change. Not only in the physical act of writing, switching from the PC only to the pen and paper, but also in the way I was thinking, writing, and approaching a story.
I’d fallen into a routine. A rut. And it wasn’t a productive one, based on the collection of agent rejection slips I’m getting.
Then I had an epiphany. And over the course of a few weeks, it solidified. As I handled it, turning it over and around, looking at it from all angles, it started taking on a sheen.
And while I admit that —Â anywhere from one week to a month from now — I could be taking back everything I’m saying and claiming I was an idiot, I feel like I’m on a new path. Like I’m taking a new direction for new direction’s sake and it feels good. I’ve changed my usual, routine method of story telling. I’ve altered the mold from which every story I’d ever written seemed to have come from.
Ether isn’t anything like what I’ve done before. The style, the POV, the characters . . . even the genre, technically.
And it feels good. I’m liking it. There’s nothing to lose, after all, since the old way hasn’t won me any prizes. Perhaps this is the change I needed. Perhaps it’s a waste of a few months. Maybe this novel will be The One. Maybe it will fail spectacularly and gather more rejections. There’s a chance this novel could turn into a new, epic, detailed series that takes off and creates its own mythos. There’s a chance I’m not talented enough to pull it off and it’ll sit in a drawer somewhere, unread.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
The Velvet Zebra 