Sometimes, when the music is just right and the moon is shining bright, I get a little weird. I like to think of it as a kind of creative rapture.
I’m not going to claim any prowess as a poet, but I do enjoy writing in verse from time to time (see: A Special Poem?). I don’t expect any applause or critical acclaim; I just wanted to share. Every single word here was chosen for a reason.
So put on some Mars Volta or Dream Theater (embedded videos are below the poem), sit back, and enjoy the ride!
I spent my teens in Oshawa, the armpit of Ontario. I started adulthood there before returning to my west coast roots. In case you don’t know, Oshawa boasts two GM plants and is sandwiched in between two nuclear power plants. There were good times and there were bad. They were my teen years, what more can I say?
But it made me smile to see a little slice of life from one of my former stomping grounds. This old man is precious, and when I saw him, his cart, the intersection known as Four Corners–well, it was like I was actually there again, if only for a moment.
It started as research for my latest novel, and ended up with me on the streets of downtown Oshawa, checking out this guy and his dog. Now if I couldjust remember the name of that restaurant in the strip across from Mr Sub, I’d be all set!
I was conversing via email with a colleague last week late at night, probably around 12:30am. I was surprised when she responded, and had to email her back to ask if she, like me, was a night owl, to which she (almost proudly) replied that she was.
I went online to search for the cute little graphic of a “night owl” she had attached, hoping I might find its source. Though I didn’t find the image, I started noticing an interesting pattern in my search results. It seemed there is more to being a night owl than meets the eye.
I’ve always known I had a different body clock than everyone else, but always thought my problem was insomnia, stress or ADD, and I can certainly say I’ve been diagnosed with the first two on multiple occasions. I’ve been prescribed all sorts of sleeping pills over the years but they’ve never worked. I’ve consistently been at my peak performance when following a bedtime schedule of 3-3:30am to 10am, and even when I want to go to bed early, I can’t seem to fall asleep any earlier than 2am. I am most alert in the late afternoons; I get a little tired at about supper but then get my second wind at about 8pm, which usually keeps me going.
This was fine a few years ago when I worked on my manuscripts because the whole house would be asleep and I had the quiet I needed without the kids clamoring for me, so I could get my writing in every day. I wrote faithfully from midnight until 3:30am–my bedtime.
This isn’t a new thing, either. Even before writing the manuscripts, as far back as I can recall, I’ve always stayed up late. I don’t wake up to alarm clocks at all–it takes a human being to wake me up. Today I heard my cell phone alarm go off for the first time (no joke!), but that’s primarily because I am still getting back to normal after a long weekend without electricity. When I heard the alarm I couldn’t believe that’s what it sounded like. It was foreign to me.
My mom says that even when I was young she had to fight with me to go to bed early and then fight again to wake me up. If I’m forced to wake up before 10am I feel disoriented and groggy, and I can’t think straight until about 10:30am no matter how much coffee I drink.
I always envied morning people. The earlybird gets the worm and all that junk. I’ve gotten strange looks and rude comments about my sleeping patterns all my life. All this time I thought something was wrong with me.
That is, until I stumbled on this link in Wikipedia about delayed sleep-phase syndrome. I cried, but in relief. I was reading about myself. That’s me!
Guess what? I’m perfectly normal! I just have a different circadian rhythm than you.
I’ve tried the suggested B vitamins and Trazodone, but both make me vomit. I haven’t tried light therapy or chronotherapy, nor any other of the suggested drug treatments, but frankly, I don’t see why I should.
As it turns out, many people who suffer from this are encouraged to accept this and try to find an accomodating vocation, such as writing, that is less dependent on the nine-to-five schedule, or at least find an employer who is flexible about these things.
Fortunately, I have such an employer and I happen to be trying to get published.
This information has taken such a huge load off my mind. I am perfectly happy to accept now that my clock runs at a different time. I feel somewhat liberated in knowing I don’t need sleeping pills and that the feelings of ADD and stress are probably from trying to perform during my non-peak hours.
If you know anyone who sounds like this, maybe reading more about DSPS will help you understand what’s really going on.
Today started like any other; I got up, went to the bathroom, poured a fresh cup of coffee and headed out to the back patio for a cigarette, wrapped in a blanket to keep warm.
And that’s when I realized this could just as easily have been my fifth morning without electricity in freezing temperatures. Not only that, but just a couple of days ago, my house was colder on the inside than it was outside, and now every time I step outside I feel very sad for all the people who are still without power.
Our power went down late Thursday evening (Dec. 14), and came back on Sunday night (Dec. 17). No electricity. No heat. Trees went down all over our neighborhood. Some of you reading this might have even seen the plane that wobbled in for a landing at Seatac airport. I can see the tower and the activity from my back patio. That was the day before the real wind storm hit. It got worse than that.
But the wind storm is like a distant memory compared to the aftermath of living without electricity for a solid three days. Even as I write this there are still tens of thousands of Puget Sound Energy customers with no power who must be completely at the end of their rope by now. I’m not blaming PSE whatsoever; they’ve had their work cut out for them and I heard that people were called in nationwide to help get everyone up and running again.
I was still awake when the power went out. It was 1am. I wrote a note for the rest of the family on the whiteboard on the side of the fridge so they wouldn’t be surprised to wake up to a chilly house. It just so happens we’ve had a stretch of record low temperatures. At freezing and just below, as a matter of fact.
We’re lucky to have a fireplace, and it was just wide enough that we could keep a fire going on one side and boil water right next to it at the same time. Needless to say, we literally lived in front of the fireplace the whole time the power was down.
At first we all took it well; the kids were good sports about having no TV, video games or computer time. “Tell us more about when we were little, Mom,” said my nine-year-old, and the three boys crowded around the fire with me while I asked them if they remembered Grandma’s green Neon or the cross-country trip when we came back to the northwest a few years ago.
I stoked the fire an awful lot. In fact, my arms are so sore from keeping the fire going that I think I’ll probably feel it for a week. There was the constant ups and downs of our body temperatures as we took turns with the best seat–the one directly in front of the fire.
Multiple times a day we had to go out and get wood, coffee, gas up the car or get snacks to make life a little easier. We roasted weenies, shook up some Jiffy Pop, bought a 24-pack of AA batteries and watched the news and whatever we could get on my mom’s little 2-inch portable TV. It was a life-saver when the kids got gnarly from having so little to do. But it all sure made a dent in my Christmas spending money.
We used candles, but stayed away from tapers–the long skinny ones are dangerous, and we knew better than to try and do some of the crazy things we’ve been seeing on the news. There was a whole family in Burien who ran a generator in their garage and they all died; there have been others dying or being hospitalized from doing the same thing. People have also tried using outdoor grills indoors and other similar methods, not understanding that the fumes are so toxic.
We took no chances. When it got really bad we huddled in the car, blasted the heat and listened to some KIRO 710 radio–they kept us informed about where to get more firewood and gas, and were also listing shelters in the areas for families who needed to get in out of the cold. A lot of businesses opened their doors with free coffee and a warm spot to sleep.
By Friday night we thought we were getting the hang of things. We fully expected to go into the weekend this way and so we had put a big sheet down in front of the fireplace to protect the carpet. We used a combination of real wood, store-bought DuraFlame-type logs and 8-lb Presto logs, which we chopped into smaller rounds to put under the camping kettle like a little burner.
The kids became focused on two things: their next turn in the good spot in front of the fire and the next time they got to eat. We were all cranky from time to time, but one thing we could all agree on was how awful it was to take the flashlight into the dark, icy bathroom and sit on that cold, cold, toilet. Since there was so little to do, it was easy to convince them to go to bed early, and if nothing else, the cool air helped them sleep well. They were loaded with extra clothes and blankets.
By Saturday we were getting optimistic; we saw utility trucks down the street, and by the time we went on yet another wood and munchie run just after sunset, the blocks to the north of us had power again.
You could see the various levels of frustration by the way people were driving, and I suppose even as I write this it’s still happening. Those who didn’t have an outage simply wonder why everyone’s driving is so crazy; those who lost power for a day or so but got it back are being considerate because they can relate to the frustration; those who lost power for two or three days, which is the point we were now at, were losing patience on the road, cutting in front of people and only thinking about their immediate needs, putting lots of other innocent people in danger. Luckily I didn’t feel that. By the time you’re sitting on that last nerve though, and your family is at home shivering and waiting for you to bring back something that will take away their discomfort, if only for a little while, it’s hard not to let it consume you.
Saturday my oldest son’s friend stopped by. They got their power back Friday evening and came to save Nick from another day of complete boredom. Nick was glad to put his Scouts training to use and help chop wood, but I’m sure he was even happier to go play video games. When it was time to pick him up, his friend graciously allowed him to spend the night.
As horrible as everything was going, I found out the next day Nick and his friend had spent the day and some of the evening traveling around the neighborhood and knocking on doors, saying hi and making sure folks were okay, listening to their war stories about the storm and the loss of power. My heart swells when I picture them out there doing that.
But we still had to go through another night without power.
On Sunday, during the running around hours before sunset, I saw the trucks on my street again, but this time a block south of us. Would the power come back this time? I didn’t want to get my hopes up for nothing. The kids were doing fine, but all I could think about was how tired I was. The bed was freezing. I tossed and turned on muscles that were already strained past what I could normally tolerate. I needed to get warm, ASAP.
By the time it got dark I could barely move, especially my shoulders. My knees and rear end were sore from so much time spent keeping the fire ablaze. My head pounded, I felt sick most of the time, forcing myself to eat and drink but getting dehydrated despite my best efforts. We finally cleaned the kitchen as best we could with the lukewarm water left in the hot water tank and rearranged the living room to make it more comfortable since we had to sit in such a confined circle to keep warm.
On Sunday night I put Anthony and Matthew to bed early again, between 8-8:30pm. I went back downstairs, grumbling how even though I was glad Nick was warm, it sucked that we weren’t. I wasn’t sure how much more of the pain and stress of this I could take.
At 9:30pm there was a big whoosh–and probably a big happy noise from me when I saw the stove night-light come on. I always leave this light on so I don’t always have to turn on the big overhead one. The lights came on upstairs and we heard the kids whoop with excitement to let us know the power was back.
It’s now Tuesday afternoon, and I’m writing this while working from home. I started this post last night, but I just didn’t have the energy to touch the computer. Now I have to be all work-geek again today, and it feels weird. My body is still de-stressing. But it’s either go to work, or have even less to give at Christmas.
I’m pretty sure if you ask my kids, they’ll tell you it wasn’t so bad. They had an experience they’ll remember for a lifetime, and with any luck, they won’t be afraid if it happens again. Now they know what to expect, and I’m glad for that much.
I think PSE is doing a great job of getting everyone back up, although I really feel the pain for everyone still waiting. I feel like I’m forcing myself a little and wish I could stay home and rest more, but at least I didn’t have to spend any nights in a shelter with my kids and deal with that kind of stress.
Now it’s time to get some work done. And catch up on laundry. And then rest some more. Sooner or later I’ll have to get that Christmas shopping done too.
So I participated in National Novel Writing Month, but I was unable to finish a 50,000-word manuscript in one month. Instead, I only managed to write about a tenth of that.
It was fun to work on the new manuscript though, which was a complete departure from the early-YA series I’ve been working on. This is a one-off story about three friends, all high school seniors, who take back their school from a power-tripping teacher who fills in as vice principal; it’s also based on real events. I’m having a whole lot of fun writing it. It normally takes about four months for me to complete a first draft, so I don’t feel all that bad that it’s not finished.
I also spent November resubmitting a manuscript and editing one of my series manuscripts, so all in all, even though I didn’t finish writing a book, I’ve taken a few steps to ensure I have hope for the future.
This month I’m editing a HOWTO that we’ll publish at The Linux Documentation Project. It’s been a little while since I worked on one, so I’m looking forward to diving back into DocBook XML. I’m also in the early stages of consulting on a certification project for a local Seattle non-profit, and have a lot of writing to do, not to mention the regular full-time job on top of it all.
Have you ever thought about writing a book? Well, you can stop procrastinating because November is National Novel Writing Month.
I’ve had this great idea for an older teen novel - a one-off, if you will - and since my writing habits have been slacking lately in favor of work, I figured registering might motivate me to get it done faster.
It’s not huge, but I have gotten past the first page. One of the girls at work started a novel last night too, and it was fun to compare notes today. I think as writers, many of us tend to work in a vacuum and the exposure to others is healthy. On the other hand, yapping too much doesn’t get books written, so it’s probably a good idea to spend more time writing and less time talking about it (like me right now).
Give it a try! Just write as much as you can each day and don’t look back or get too caught up in your details - plow on, even when you want to fix something. If you acutally take the time to write every day for a month it will become habit. And even if you don’t get your novel completed, at least now you know the secret sauce: habit. :)
Cheers!
–TM
Update 2006-11-14:
I’ve had hardly any time to work on the new book–I’ve only completed 10 pages, but it takes me about 4 months to write a first draft of 50,000 words, so if I get a quarter of the way through writing it by the end of this month then as far as I’m concerned I’m on target.
My nickname on NaNoWriMo is voodoochild if you want to add me as your buddy!
If you’re a writer looking for musical inspiration, check out “The Hook,” by Blues Traveler. This is the writer’s anthem and always puts me in the mood. The video won't play while embedded but will open in a new window if you click the image..
Commonwealth Journalists Association - International association seeks to provide facilities and bring about interchanges of journalists between Commonwealth countries.
Horror Writers Association - International organization promoting the interests of writers of Horror and Dark Fantasy.
HTML-Writers Guild - International organization of Web authors, over 147,000 members worldwide.
IEEE Technical Societies/Councils - The societies and councils promote and facilitate the technical activities of the IEEE, and ensure that the IEEE is the leading global professional organization in electrotechnology, information technologies and allied sciences.
International Association of Business Communicators - International association provides products, services, activities and networking opportunities to help people and organizations achieve excellence in effective communications.
Internet Press Guild - Organization promoting excellence in journalism about the Internet, online services, and bulletin board systems.
Investigative Reporters and Editors - Formed to create an international forum for journalists to share story ideas, newsgathering techniques and news sources.
National Association of Black Journalists - Organization of journalists, students and media-related professionals that provide programs and services, and advocates on behalf of black journalists worldwide.
National Association of Science Writers - Chartered to foster the dissemination of accurate information regarding science through all media normally devoted to informing the public.
Society for Editors and Proofreaders - Society has around 1300 members (mostly in the UK), providing a wide range of editorial services to the publishing community and beyond.
When I reached the ripe old age of thirteen I wrote a poem that was published in my junior high yearbook. I was recently going through some of my belongings and couldn’t believe I still had it kicking around after all these years. Diaries have been destroyed, pictures have been tossed, reams of failed writing attempts throughout the years are all landfill by now, but this poem just doesn’t seem to want to go away.
I may not have been the most articulate of poets, but I definitely had something to say!
Insecurity
Instability describes it, Not sure, dubious. Self doubt really illustrates it. Everybody has it, nobody wants it. Cause for alarm is all it takes; Uncertainty overcomes, Revealing apprehensiveness. Is there a possible remedy? Try to find out, Yet don’t let it bother you.
Deep down, I guess I’ve always had Open Source tendencies. Who would have thought that my days of yore would have had such an impact on my future? If not for my strange choice of creative pursuits, I might never have known about the other side of technology–the “free as in liberty” side. It’s downright sad that the online communities of today have become so popular, considering there’s not much personality out there. Kids today really believes this is the greatest new thing. Not so new though, really. (And here I am blogging now…who’d have thought!)
Metropolis (BBS) was a fun city to visit, from her debut in late 1991 until we pulled the plug toward the end of 1996. By the end of it, there were 600 regular citizens dialing in to our little “city” from all over North America. Not bad for one phone line in the burbs of Vancouver!
For the uninitiated, bulletin board systems were once all the rage and began sometime in the late ’80s, lasting about a decade before they finally ran their course. By around 1998 they were almost extinct.
So what is a BBS? I drew an ANSI cityscape like this one, and with freely available BBS shareware I built a menu of message areas, file areas, games and other assorted time-wasting activities to offer our dial-up users (how many of you remember the old ProComm?). But Metro was always about her message areas, since she was a city full of passionate storytellers. I hooked it all up to a 1200 baud modem (I think we got as far as 14.4 when we stopped), and set it up to monopolize the phone line by taking calls.
Getting visitors to the BBS was a breeze. So many other people started running these things that a few BBS lists had developed. I contacted the maintainers and gave them the name, number and some basics about what we offered, and before I knew it, the line was busy 24×7.
I was known as Mistress of Metropolis, and by that I meant sysop (short for system operator, or Queen Bee). Together with fINSTER, my co-sysop and co-soulmate, we cultivated friendships with other local sysops, and before we knew it, newbies–also affectionately known as ankle-biters–started coming to us to learn the ropes. We all traded our lists of banned users so we could automatically reject known troublemakers at login. Hey, back then we were beyond royalty; we were part of an elite technocracy and we all reserved the right to refuse entry through our magical gates.
One of our sysop friends took a black and white photo of me and created GIF and JPG images with the city drawn around me, proudly displaying our number. I was about 22 years old in the photo, and could have been mistaken for a Guess girl back then if I hadn’t been so much of a geek. At any rate, it drew in a lot of calls, and all we wanted to do was grow our community. It was a pretty innovative use of technology back then!
Metropolis was filled with amazing things to see and do. We didn’t offer much in the way of downloadable files for a couple of reasons: a) we only had a 50 MB hard drive (yes you read correctly, MEGA-bytes) and b) we had all these people aching to write! It was really all about the stories that Metropolis evoked from her members: in one part of town, perhaps it was The Bistro, a special group of Metropolis citizens collaborated on a story that went on for at least a year, maybe more.
And where is Elfwine, creator of our beloved detective Sam Spadewine? Where is The Nightingale? What about Jean Harlow, Mushin, Blue Dragon and Crunchie? And where the heck is Rupchuk? My prodigy–he sure was a great kid. Where are you all now?
Like all others, Metropolis was also wiped off the map by the World Wide Web. But not before we had our messages networked out through the Fidonet pipe; at least for a little while we managed to go worldwide.
If you guys ever see this message, I hope you’ll drop me an email and say hello!
Reuters reported today that someone named Dan Tench cracked the ciphered message created by High Court Justice Peter Smith in his ruling regarding the Da Vinci Code (Source).
I found this amusing, since I did the very same thing last summer (see “A Special Poem,” Aug. 28, 2005), and so far nobody has come forward with the answer. Could it be because there are two levels of encryption? Don’t worry–the answers are out there on the Web, because that’s how I learned how to do it.
In light of the recent articles circulating about James Frey and JT LeRoy, I am burning to say a few things, and since it’s my blog…
I am a writer of fiction. I am also a survivor of life. I am not shy, nor am I a victim, though I have been known to be a recluse, if only because no one’s come up with an invite I couldn’t refuse. It’s a pleasure to stay home when your family rocks like mine does.
Many moments of my past have easily been as heinous as anything these “men” came up with. Maybe it could be therapeutic to write about them, but really, I’d prefer not to stick certain parts of my life in your face like that unless you ask, and even then, I’m not sure you really need to know. I’d rather earn your respect through my fiction, first and foremost, and if you still happen to be interested in my personal life, then we’ll talk–a little. Bottom line: my goal is to be a published writer, not a celebrity.
To the publishers and literary agents who were affected negatively by these twisted sisters:
1. My books are a series of middle-grade/young adult adventures with a cool hook that hasn’t been done yet.
2. I have completed three manuscripts, the last of which is now in the editing phase. Over a dozen ideas are banked, waiting for my attention, and the kids in my head are banging on the door for their turn to be heard.
3. I have lots to say, be it in person, over the phone or via email. Maybe too much.
4. If I do write an autobiography, it will probably be a trilogy, because a) the book would otherwise be thick enough to stop machine-gun fire, b) I’m too detail-oriented for my own damn good, and c) “threes” have always been good to me.
5. I’ve been in the corporate world for many years, so I’m not some hack who hasn’t got a clue.
So who’s up for a professional writer with no hoaxes on her agenda?
