I'm eyeing you

My husband and I were doing a little bedtime reading last night. He’s not a big reader, so this was a joyful occasion for me. A free pass to read without the ‘when are you going to turn that damned light off’ vibe wafting at me. He’s been working his way through a book he borrowed from a coworker. I have no idea what she said to entice him to read it, but I need to find out so I can have more in bed reading time.

Mr. Not-a-big-reader lies next to me, flipping pages. I’m snickering over the current chapter of Grammar Sucks (which I can’t recommend enough.). He turns to me and says, “What the heck does this mean? She cut her eyes to the other people in the room.”

The first thing that came to mind was the MC plucking out her eyeballs, chopping them in mid-air hibachi chef style and aiming the pieces at everyone else in the room. Mmm. Caught one in my mouth! Tastes like shrimp.

Maybe she plucked out her eyeballs, shuffled and cut them and dealt them like cards? Hey, I’ve got a pair!

Visually, really, what the hell does that look like? How about, she glanced at the other people in the room? No sharp objects needed.

I laughed, shrugged and went back to reading. Two minutes later, I’m interrupted by, “Does this seem excessive to you?” He goes on to read a three sentence paragraph that included all of the following: I glanced around, looked at, looked back at me, I caught his eye (Good catch! I hate when people drop my eyes when I throw them. Or cut them. Eek!), shifted his gaze, and looked away.

Holy excessive eyeball usage, Batman! Back away from the eyes. No, really. Put them down and walk away. And don’t look back!

Just below that, there’s another paragraph. Four short sentences this time, including: I looked, He did look, I gazed, glanced at me, I quickly looked.

AH!!!!! Make it stop! Turns out every single movement is being over described in an attempt to add tension. The MCs are watching everyone in the room, people in the room are watching them but everyone is looking away and no one is meeting any one’s gaze (Hello, right eyeball. Nice to meet you.).

We all have crutches we fall back on when writing scenes. But please, for the love of your eyeballs, don’t put them on crutches… er… I mean, overuse them. They need a rest too. No one likes dry, tired eyes.

Dependability

My goal for this post is to not mention that writing challenge that happens every November that takes over two and a half months of my life. So, moving on....

Yesterday my percolator finally provided a solution to one of my broken short stories. Yay! Now I have to revise the beginning and end again. Let's hope its the last time.

And now for a short rant that has nothing to do with writing because everything that does seems to lead back to that one thing that I'm endeavouring not to talk about today.

I spent the majority of my weekend throwing birthday parties for my eight year old daughter. I had a lot of actual work to do, but I stayed up late both nights to do it, not getting much happy weekend down time so I could perform my all important mom duties during the day. We had a family party, to which my own sister was forty-five minutes late because she lost track of time / switched her plans (even though I'd specifically picked that date and time because it fit in her schedule).

My daughter also wanted a friend party. I'm pretty jaded when it comes to friend parties, having been bitten with a failed party for my son years ago. He has the misfortune to have been born during spring break, when everyone is out of town or has plans. She has a fairly safe birth date, so I agreed to do the whole party shebang as long as we kept it at five guests. I didn't want to go broke.

We sent out invites. We got four official RSVPs and one girl who said she would be there. We got a pinata. We bought party favors. We got balloons. I made cupcakes. We decorated the yard (because it was a gorgeous fall day and if I didn't have to have a bunch of screaming girls in my house, I was all for it). My daughter set up games and I bought prizes. Everything was ready on time. Hooray!

One girl showed up. One. And her mom almost forgot but happened to check her calendar a few hours beforehand and managed to make it.

Thank goodness for that, but still. If you say you are going to be somewhere. Be there. Especially when kids are depending on you. It's darn hard to play party games with just two kids.

Needless to say, she was very disappointed in her friends and I wasn't very happy with their mothers. Instead of having fun with her friends, she learned that she can't depend on them. There's plenty of time in life to become jaded, she didn't need to start at eight.

An hour into the "party", seeing how bummed my daughter was even though she was trying to have a good time, I called a friend of mine to borrow a filler kid -hoping to at least allow the girls to play the games my daughter had proudly devised. I told my friend that her daughter didn't need to bring a gift. I already felt silly enough asking her to join a party in progress and gifts weren't the important part of the party. We just needed someone to come play, eat cupcakes, win prizes and break open a pinata. If I had had a few more friends with daughters of similar ages that wouldn't have been afforted by my asking her to join a party she hadn't actually been invited to, I would have called them. But I didn't.

Her daughter and mine aren't great friends. They don't know each other very well. They're not in the same class or even same grade. But she arrived with a big bag of presents (yes, even after I'd told her not to). The girls all had a great time. When the party was over and the other girl went home, she stayed an extra hour to just play.

I only hope that my daughter doesn't remember her birthday party as the day people didn't show up but the day she met a new friend. Dependable friends are priceless.

Insert witty title

Sorry about the lack of posts this week. I've been down and out with a killer migraine.

On a happy note, I figured out the rough idea of my main NaNo story for this year. It may turn into a 50k novella or it may be one of several short stories. We'll have to wait and see where the blinking cursor takes me.

And yes, I'm going with the deserted bike on a sidewalk idea I brought up earlier.

Commander McWeasel is happy to hear I made some progress with commiting to a story idea. He's threatened to nip my ankles if I don't start with and complete this story before wandering off into sparkly new plot bunny territory. Since I'm still in bandages from my last post, I don't doubt that he'll follow through with it.

The cyborg weasel commander has arrived!

He's here! He's here! Last night, Commander Rippy McWeasel beamed into my house to let me know his team of rabid cyborg attack weasels are arriving on Earth. They will be dispatched to your writing areas and will all be in position by November first to monitor our NaNo efforts.

He has taken up his post near my keyboard to keep an eye on me and learn my habits. He tells me this is so he can better tell when I'm procrastinating and when I'm gazing off into space but really working on writing. I think it's so he can memorize my passwords. Between you and me I'm sure he wants my credit card and bank numbers so he can set up a nice little place on the ocean somewhere. Maybe buy an island to populate with hot female cyborg weasels.

Won't he be surprised to learn that the most he could expect out of my finances would be a old, very used travel trailer beside a sludgy river? HA! Jokes on you, Rippy.

Oh crud, he can see what I'm typing. OWW! My ankles! I was kidding, Rippy! Owww!

Grammar Sucks... but it's funny

I loved english classes back in school. Took as many as I could and had a great time. But.... ahem... much time has elapsed between my knowledge gathering and my attempts to make good use of what I once knew.

In sorting through my stack of intended NaNo raffle prize books, I finally came to Grammar Sucks: What to do to make your writing much more better. I've never been a fan of cut and dry reference books. I have a few, but honestly, I don't use them because they're boring. Not so with this one.

In fact, I'm keeping it. Sorry.

The examples alone make me laugh. The chapter and section titles are hilarous. When I'm enjoying myself, I'm much more likely to remember lessons about prepositional phrases, double negatives and adjective phrases. Those all sound like boring things, don't they? But when illustrated with sentences I can relate to, these things sink in.

"The private party behind the garage contains all the cool people."

"The hot chick with blonde hair walked past me on the way to the food table"

"There will not be no Happy Hour today because of the blizzard." (Oh no! Wait. We're snowed in during happy hour and the double negative means it is on? Awesome!)

A lot of this stuff I know, but I have forgotten the actual name for it. Now I know again! If only all memory was so easily restored. Is there a book that can help me remember what I was going into the other room to get yesterday that I swear was important but couldn't remember once I'd walked the thirty steps to get there?

With refreshers on everything from the basics to the nit picky advanced stuff, you can't go wrong with this book. There are even several pages covering the present through past participle phrases of common verbs and plentiful examples on every page.

Both witty and informative, this book is perfect for any type of writer at any level. I recommend it to all of you! Go now! Buy it and laugh (and learn) with me.