Tag: writing

The Monday Review – Live from New York Edition

On By BekkiIn The Weekly ReviewLeave a comment

1. A and I are now the proud owners of a bedroom set. In the almost nine years we’ve been together, we’ve had night boxes, night speakers, night crates, and, once, a night fishtank, but never night stands. All that changed last Monday, and let me tell you, it is a life altering experience.Z explores the new furniture2. WTF X-Files? On a scale of 1-Dexter, the last episode in the mini series was about a 7, but that’s only because I refuse to believe it was unintentionally that bad. Memorable quote “He’s too sick for the vaccine! He needs STEM CELLS.” Will Sculley save Mulder? Will Fox commission more episodes? Did Einstein survive? By the time the closing credits rolled, I was laughing too hard to care.

3. Do you have a toddler? Are you watching Masha and the Bear? No? You’re welcome.

4. Bronwyn is kicking my ass. Revisions are always much slower for me than the zero draft, but this is bordering on the ridiculous. It’s why you don’t see much in the way of novel updates from me… Chapter 6, days 7-15: still struggling through the squirrel killing scene.

5. Things I miss about New York: the subway, good pizza, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants.  The wine bar I’m writing this in hits two of the three: it’s a blink-and-you-miss-it set of stairs that I’ve walked by dozens of times, and they serve a proper thin-crust, crushed tomato sauce pizza. There’s also a Christmas story leg lamp behind the bar and a random stained glass mural of an owl and a raven in a tree.  You just can’t get this in Vallejo.

Closing Tabs

I’ve always wanted to live in a house with a conservatory.  As that’s not likely to happen any time soon, I’ll settle for an indoor fruit tree or four.

I totally got tripped up by this guy when I was working restaurants, and it amazes me that, despite the fact that she’s writing about the STEM fields and I was a cocktail waitress, the MO was almost identical – down to the inappropriate use of “shiny.”

On a much lighter note, I came across this list of places to hike with a toddler in the East Bay and I can’t wait to go out with A and Z.

Unfortunately, said hikes are probably going to have to wait a month or so, as it appears that the reprieve from the rain is over with a vengeance.

 

2015 by the Numbers

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

I like numbers. Not nearly as much as I like words, mind you. I won’t go so far as to say that numbers don’t lie, because you can manipulate numbers almost as easily as you can manipulate words. When used with the appropriate amount of caution, however, numbers do a pretty good job of telling you where you’re at.  Let’s take a look, shall we?

Apply Ass to Chair

This year, I told myself I wanted to write more.  That I am a better and happier person when I make that time for myself.  Ultimately, though, I didn’t write as much as I had wanted to. We moved, I got out of the habit of waking up at 6, the words didn’t make it onto the page.

Month Days Hours Words Blogging Railroad
January 28 21.40 9613 1 26
February 20 13.10 0  – 20
March 11 8.17 0  – 11
April 2 1.13 0  – 2
May – – –  – –
June – – – – –
July – – – – –
August 1 0.60 0 – 2
September – – – – –
October – – – – –
November 15 12.80 955 8 7
December 17 14.60 3323 8 9
Totals 94 71.80 13891 16 77
Average 13 10.26 1984 5 11

 

The result? I only wrote 94 out of 365 days this year.  That averages out to about 1 in every 4 days.  And the months I thought I was doing ok, particularly November and December, were slimmer than I would have liked. I’m also doing about as much blogging as writing, which is a bit surprising.  The Monday posts usually take me about three hours to put together, so I need to get better at condensing that time or working on blog posts at night, to graConflicting Resolutionsb mornings back for novel writing.

Get Moving

I’d planned to go into Cardio Trainer, the app I use to track exercise, and pull out stats on how far I went, how often, and so on.  Unfortunately, the app no longer links up with my Google account, and I had to hard reset my phone about a month ago. So it looks like I’m in the market for a new app.

Without data, I can tell you that my exercise numbers are the inverse of the writing numbers – I was out and about way more often in the spring and summer. I picked Z up from school on the bike a bunch of times, we did long walks in the stroller in the space between dinner and bed, and weekends saw us hiking the trails in town.

Reading 

According to Goodreads,* I read 34 books this year.  Most of those were sci-fi, fantasy, or historical fiction.  I read one non-fiction book – The Bully Pulpit by Doris Keans Goodwin – and it took me the whole year to get through it.  I have also pretty much entirely switched to reading eBooks.  In fact, the only print book I recall reading is God’s War, by Kameron Hurley, and that was because I picked up the first two books of the Bel Dame series at Half-Price. I don’t have precise stats (although I’ll start doing this for next year), but from a scan of authors I read 1 book by a non-US authors, no books by non-white authors, and 22 books by female authors.

*You might have to friend me to see the link.

Travel20151110_101744

I traveled a lot this year – enough to earn elite status for the first time with an airline.  Google maps says I took 26 trips, but when I break that down a lot of it is travel around town.  Google also had a bit of a rough time with the move from NY to CA, telling me I took several trips to and around California in the first few months we lived here.  My rough estimate is 8 trips, evenly split between business and pleasure.  I went to four states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas, and DC, and one country, Poland.  The places I went most often in 2015 were my sister-in-law’s house, Z’s daycare, SFO, Target (!), various parks and playgrounds, JFK, and REI.

Final Thoughts

My biggest takeaway from this is that you get out of tracking what you put in.  The writing stats don’t really show blog posts or word count from earlier in the year because I didn’t really track those until the last few months. My Goodreads count is a bit lower than it should be, largely because I’m not great at actually adding things to Goodreads.  As for Google… well, it thinks I took a ferry ride that cut through El Sobrante and Richmond!

On a more serious note, doing this has helped me start thinking about my goals for 2016. I expect I’ll be putting that post up some time in the next few weeks.

Monday Roundup

On By BekkiIn The Weekly Review2 Comments

In an effort to help myself get out of bed early to write, I’m going to try doing a weekly round-up post Monday.  This will be a post for quick blurbs about what’s going on with me, various articles I’ve read over the past week, and such.

1.  I’m going to be in DC and NY this week for a colleague’s funeral.  It’s going to be a super quick trip (DC Tuesday night and Wednesday am; NY Wednesday night and leaving Thursday), but if you’re around and want to meet up, let me know.  On a related note, thanks to everyone for all the love and support over the past few days.  I never cease to be amazed by how awesome all my friends are.

2.  This month is NaNo, but I’m not doing it.  I think I would probably go crazy trying to fit in 2,000 words a day, on top of everything else that’s going on.  Instead, I’m going to work on actually getting out of bed at 6 am when my alarm goes off instead of rolling over and catching another 30 minutes of sleep.  I’m going easy on myself and defining writing loosely – blog posts, short stories, Railroad – anything that involves my ass in a chair and my fingers writing.

3.  Speaking of writing, I think I finally know how to finish a story I’ve been working on since high school. I have high hopes for this one, but it is going to involve a ton of work and a complete rewrite.  My goal is to finish the rough draft this week, and have it submission ready by the end of the month.

4.  We are about 75% moved into the new house.  I can’t say often enough how nice it is to finally live somewhere that feels like home.  Even the ugly wallpaper doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it ought to.  I’m also glad that we haven’t bought much furniture yet, because nearly nothing we own matches with the house.  I know, I know, first world problems.  But it’s been fun to start looking on Craigslist and at estate sales for pieces that will work.  We’re hoping to furnish it mainly with used pieces, things that were built to last (and with any luck built around the same time as the house). And it’s definitely going to be a slow, paycheck to paycheck process.

5. Z turned 2 on Saturday.  She’s such a real kid now.  Almost overnight, she started using two and three word sentences.  She has her own language, which I will miss when she grows out of it.  “Ah” is want, “kecks” is socks, and “home” is hand, like give me a hand.  When she says “my home” she means “help me out here.”  It’s exciting to watch her figure things out, even if she does throw a tantrum approximately every 2.75 minutes.

Closing Tabs

Not much this week, as I do most of my web reading through Facebook and it doesn’t have a good history feature.  I’ll open more in browser next week, so I can save them for you.  In the meantime, here’s a few from the week.

The Real Reason Germs Spread in Winter: Hint: it’s not because you didn’t blow dry your hair before you went out.  Also, after reading this I’m seriously considering donating a humidifier to Z’s daycare.

Brown Butter Banana Bread: This is a super forgiving recipe.  I had no measuring cups or spoons, so I winged it using the measuring cup for the rice and one of Z’s baby spoons.  It still rose beautifully and smelled great.  I can’t tell you how it tasted, though, since I realized after baking that the buttermilk I used expired about 3 weeks ago and threw the whole thing out.

Why Food Allergy Fakers Need to Stop: This was a long read, but worth it.  When I was waiting tables, I definitely had customers who would tell me they were allergic to something, then look at the substitute, and say they wanted the original after all.  Also, none of the restaurants I worked in had allergy procedures like this (or if they did, the servers weren’t told).

I’m looking forward reading Wake of Vultures.  A few of my favorite book reviewers and authors have already put it on the must-read list.  Also, if you haven’t yet read Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black books, you should get on that.

…and then what happened?

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things about watching PBS was the part after the shows, where they said “funding was provided by X and Y company, and by viewers like you.”  There was something so darn cool about the fact that ordinary people could be part of shows like Reading Rainbow and Arthur.

That chance to be part of the magic, to make something creative happen, is what I like so much about Kickstarter. When you’re funding on a small scale, every pledge to back a project, even if it’s only a few dollars, matters. It’s exciting, too, holding your breath until the last minute, waiting to see if that project you backed is going to fund, or reach that crazy stretch goal you’re so hyped about. Kickstarter lets us all be patrons of the arts.

Enter Fireside Magazine. Once upon a time, during the “Golden Age” of the pulp magazines, a writer like Robert Silverberg could make a living on an average of 5 short stories a month. These days, pro markets pay 5 cents a word. That’s $200 for a typical short story of about 4,000 words.  Know anybody who can support themselves on $1000 a month, pre-taxes?  Yeah, me neither. *

Fireside is trying to change that. They pay 12.5 cents a word, or $500 for a 4,000 word story. At five published stories a month, that’s almost enough to live on. In order to make this happen, they’re running a Kickstarter, with a goal of $25,000. Right now, they’re only about 25% funded, with 17 days to go.

I want to see them make it.  I want to see a market, and an audience, that supports paying writers a livable wage.  So I’m offering to match donations made in the next 24 hours. I did this last year, with a $500 cap.  Together, we raised $922.

This year, I’m raising the cap to $625.  If we hit it, that’s $1250, or 10,000 words.  10,000 words funds 10 pieces of flash fiction, or 2-3 short stories.  10,000 words is almost enough to pay the writers for an entire issue of Fireside.

Let’s do this.

_______________________________________

Who are you, anyway?

I’m a writer, a lawyer, and a mom.  Not necessarily in that order.

When is this happening?

I’ll match all pledges from 2 pm EST on Friday, March 14 to 2pm EST on Saturday, March 15.

Why only 10,000 words?  You did just say you’re a lawyer.

Because it’s a nice, round number. And, without going into the economics of living in NYC with a kid and student loans, suffice it to say that this will eat up most of my discretionary income for the next few months.

What is Fireside?

It’s a magazine that publishes great storytelling and pays writers a living wage. Their stories aren’t confined to a single genre. The only criteria is that the story has to make the reader say “…and then what happened?”  Brian White, the cellar-dwelling pet of Chuck Wendig editor, has a great pitch for year 3 over on Wendig’s blog.

How does this work, exactly?

Easy.  Go to the Fireside Year 3 Kickstarter and make a pledge.  Then send out a Tweet using the hashtag #10000words and a link to this post.  Feel free to cc me @bekkiwrites or Fireside @FiresideFiction.  If you don’t use Twitter, post a comment here.**


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* Even the government agrees – the poverty line for a single person in 2014 is just shy of $12,000.

** You don’t have to post the amount you backed the project for, and I’ll match any pledge made during the 24 hour period, even if you don’t tweet or comment. But wouldn’t it be cool if we could get #10000words to trend?

Women Destroy Science Fiction (Space Opera Edition)

On By BekkiIn This is Feminism1 Comment

I grew up reading sci-fi and fantasy. The first adult novel my parents gave me was Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsong. I devoured the other Pern novels, then discovered Terry Pratchet, and Neil Gaiman, and Lois McMaster Bujold, and Mercedes Lackey, and Robert Heinlein, and Margaret Atwood and… You get the idea. The sci-fi/fantasy shelves are the first place I go in a bookstore. It’s the only genre where I find both comfort and challenge as a reader.

Which is why it’s always astounded me that I don’t write more in the genre. My stories and novels tend toward the contemporary rather than the imagined. I’ve been trying to rectify this, one short story at a time, on the theory that the best way be part of the community is to write in it.

Enter Lightspeed Magazine and the Women Destroy Science Fiction edition. I’ve followed some of the kerfluffel about women being harassed at cons, or being told they’re not geek enough, or their writing ruins entire genres. And while I haven’t experienced any of it, I think it’s high time this kind of nonsense stopped. As you can probably guess from the title, Lightspeed does too. They’re putting together a special edition of sci-fi written entirely by women, and they’re taking submissions from the slush pile to do it.

Awesome, I thought. I should submit something. Except that none of my stories are sci-fi.

Then, as sometimes happens, the first line of a story came to me:*

Sure, Rhyden was a backwater, but it was also home to Lady Evangelina Rhyssa, Ambassador-at-Large to the Galactic Council, three-time winner of the Andromeda Pageant, and certified sharp-shooter extraordinaire.

Suddenly, I had my protagonist, Cass O’Reilly. She’s scrappy, sarcastic, and the worst P.I. this side of Vega. For the first time, I understood what other authors meant when they talked about throwing their characters into bad situations for the sheet enjoyment of watching them battle their way out.

For $5 you can get yourself a copy of Women Destroy Science Fiction, as well as the companion destruction of horror and fantasy. And you never know, Cass just might end up in there.

___
*For the record, I’m a firm believer that the only way to write, and write well, is to apply ass to chair. But there’s undeniably a certain magic to the process, and my personal muse seems to have a habit of dropping first lines into my head and letting me work out the rest of the story from there. Who says I can’t have it both ways?