A Newborn and a Notebook

Check out this awesome handout from Writing Mother extraordinaire Ann Douglas.

What does being a writing mother look like to you?

Hello Writing Mothers! I always wonder how other writing mothers actually write . . . what does it look like while they write. So here's a look at what it looks like when I write.

My daughter must be with me, she's a funny child. When she wants to be by herself, Do Not Touch Her. When she wants to be with me, Do Not Put Me Down! Thankfully, like the bell curve, she's only at the extreme once in a while.

But her new favorite place to be is on my desk. She's got a little spot on a two drawer file cabinet (to the left of where she's sitting in the pic), but she often migrates over to the desktop. Unfortunately she's clued into the fact that I can look at her and have a conversation and still keep typing. Sometimes she reaches over to pull my hands away from the keyboard.

What does being a writing mother look like to you?

Call for Submissions: Women and Horses

Well this one is sure near and dear to my heart!

Christina Katz sent out a note about submissions for an upcoming anthology about Women and Horses. If you've ever fallen in love with a horse, you might have a story to submit.

The Story of a Sign

Not only will this make your eyes leak, but it says something wonderful about the power of words.

What do you listen to while writing?

I really haven't found one thing to listen to... I know I do well in silence, but really, I might just as well say "I write well in an Austrian spa" because my chances are about the same for silence.

Very often I have the tv on in the background, I try to keep it on the country music channel. I used to have the TV on all day long and I developed this really weird belief that if I turned it off, I Was Going To Miss Something Important!! Nevermind that it was always the same political blah-blah and pop-star-shaves-something crapola that it always is.

With my first book I wrote half of it alone in my living room/office while the kids were with my mother and with the music cranked. I especially listened to Pink. I don't know why, but I was practically a democrat after listening to her for so long that I had to immerse myself in some Toby Keith to get "right" again.

Mailbox! Mailbox!

When I try to post the video it posts v e r y w i d e so let's just try this link. It's worth it.

Though I didn't see Georgia there. But I still love Comic Sans!

What Do You Stand For?

Several weeks ago I responded to a query in Help A Reporter Out, looking for people to submit videos and pictures of why they are Standing Up To Cancer.



This is the result of that query. You'll see me briefly at 1:40. I'm holding a sign that says "for the next generation". This was for my friend Karen, who you can see below, holding my daughter at the 2006 NRHA Futurity. This picture was taken after she won her first battle against cancer. She's now fighting for a second time. My daughter turns two tomorrow and I want her to know Karen when she's twenty. So that's why I'm standing up to cancer.


Please go have a look at the StandUp2Cancer site. It's a wonderful project. Especially The Stand part.

And if you feel so inclined, please feel free to support me in the Run For The Cure in October.

RIP Madison

Madison was the first dog that I chose for myself and brought home. Sure, there'd been the little Fizzgig that my parents bought us when we were kids. But Madison was mine. She was a rescue. Tied up in a barn in Conrich, Alberta and awaiting a bullet because she couldn't work sheep. She was a border collie, though from the looks of her she might have something else mixed in there. She's not a typical "tri" coloured border collie.


But I hauled her home from that stall when I was 16 - and now I'm in my 30s. So we figure she was at least 16 or 17 years old. I named her Madison because that was the name I had in my head for my first daughter. I just couldn't wait long enough to save it for a girl. And once I did have Miss E, I couldn't name her Madison because we had Madison the Dog. Unlike my cousin, Jodie, who everyone knows was named after her father's horse, Jodie. :)


Lately all the parts weren't working any more. The front end was fine. The eyes were going, the hearing had long since departed. The back end couldn't support her to stand in one spot for more than a few seconds. It kind of moved sideways as she walked, her right leg seemed to lean into the left for support.


It took a long time to make the decision to put her down. She wasn't my dog any more, she'd been living with mom since 1996 when I moved to Europe. When I came home the next year I didn't bother to claim her back. So it wasn't my decision to put her down, but it was. I don't know if mom was waiting for my ok or not, but last week I said "Yeah mom, I think it's time" and this week they booked the appointment.


I wasn't there for it. I had to pick up my daughter. But these pictures were taken the same day. Mom commented that they made her look so healthy and happy. They do. But I've left out the pictures where she couldn't get up or she was splayed out trying to stand. Or where she sneezed as she walked and almost fell over.


It was hard to take these pictures, knowing they'd be the last I'd see of her. I would try to keep her in one spot, reaching out with my hand to steady her. But she couldn't see my hand until it was touching her nose, so it would often startle her.

M doesn't get it yet, why Madison isn't there any more. Well, that's not true. He understands that she's gone to heaven. But last night he stayed at Mom's and as he was going to bed he said, "First is a baby, then toddler, then kid, then teenager, and then adult. And after that is when you are put down?" So I see we have some more discussing to do.

Well thank goodness someone finally explained it to me...

I was married into a Scottish family and I could never get the terminology down pat about Great Britain, Britain, the UK... etc...

Now we have a diagram.

Woe is me... or, I, no... me ... oh what the heck, just WOE.

It's close to 11 pm and I'm up. With the flu. See, I've been sleeping ALL DAY. Sleeping that fitful sleep where you are hot then cold then sweating then not... and it was near record breaking temperatures today. When I was cold, I slept upstairs... when hot, I moved to the basement.

Which is where hubby found me when he came home to tell me that his truck was dead. Some electrical problem. And you know with those problems they could spend ten hours (at $100/hr) looking for the problem and not find it... so I think we're going to be a one car family. Surprisingly I'm not upset about this... now that he's working downtown he doesn't need a car, he can take transit downtown just fine.

But I will miss the little truck. It's a little Chevy S10, a two-seater that wasn't really that appropriate for our four-person family... but still, it was the last little bachelor hold-out for DH. :)

Me want! Me want!

Ok, if every I have the chance to build my own house, I am building myself these stairs. I know hubby would like me to move my "collection" somewhere else because the books be takin' over!

Parenting Award

If you look at this picture you will notice that I took my kids to Heritage Park... with a gun. That would be my beautiful daughter throwing a gun at her brother.

Note to self: check out what's stored in the Pikachu backpack before leaving the house.

Writer's Block?

Check out my post over at Mama Needs A Book Contract about writer's block.

Plastic Bags

Have a look at this slide show regarding plastic bag recycling. It's long, but worth it. We no longer use plastic bags and I love it... selfishly I have to say it works for our family because those cloth bags can hold so much more...

If you are looking for a distraction...

... a panorama of Paris at night.

You zoom in for a very clear, full panorama. It's quite beautiful. I've never really wanted to go to Paris before... but now I kind of do!

Run away! Run away!

So last week I laid down the butter tart gauntlet that I would be a skinny biatch lot smaller by the time that the Surrey International Writers’ Conference came around.

I’m down 2.5 lbs so far!

Can I get a woot woot?

Today I ran 1.65 miles in 25 minutes. I know it's not a world record, but it's a record for me! (I THINK that is 2.6 km, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong!)

I've also signed up for the CIBC Run for the Cure on October 3rd. You can donate to me online here. And for my 'mericuhn friends... it's durn cold up here in October so you should donate twice as much!! I think I was feeling especially brave after my lunch run... and I was thinking about my friend Karen who was just told that that biatch breast cancer is back again. So while she's fighting a real fight... I'm going to run to support her.

I'm more of a short stretch reader myself...

Michael Hyatt is the President and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. He writes a blog called From Where I Sit. Back in June he wrote a post called What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. In it he disects an article in Atlantic Monthly where writer Nicholas Carr asks, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

There's one quote in particular that Hyatt pulls from the article:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I read this and thought... whiskey tango foxtrot ... are you kidding me? That's what reading is like for most mothers. (she said, noting that the writer and the blogger are both male)

I think he lost me where he said he'd "spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose". I have not had long stretches of anything remotely close to reading since early 2001.

Some other pics

Over the weekend (whilst groaning about my belly and lying .. crap.. laying?... whatever on the couch, I did keep my camera close...)

In Which I Will Submit To A Kiss

Oh EEK A Bug!

Try Cut Me Now

Eclipse

Jodie Coston's Photography course - Lesson 1 - Assignment 2

We've had some weird sort of bug going through the house so my creative juices (gah, I hate that phrase... it's sounds so icky!) have been runnin' low.

But here's the lesson where I tried to take pictures of something from different angles. So, um, I present you Tree From Angle #1.


And Tree From Angle #2.


This is not very exciting, I KNOW! But I've been lying on the couch for the last couple of days! Weak excuse, yeah... I really liked assignment #1.

100 Best Novels

Modern Library has come up with the 100 Best Novels. I'm wondering... how many you have read? Sadly, I haven't read even close to a quarter of them... wouldn't that be a cool challenge? Hmmmm ... I am not sure I could get through the first one!

The list below is the Reader-chosen list, there's also a list that's picked by the illustrious board.

1. ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
2. THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
4. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. ANTHEM by Ayn Rand
8. WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
9. MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
10. FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard
11. ULYSSES by James Joyce
12. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
13. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. DUNE by Frank Herbert
15. THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein
16. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein
17. A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute
18. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
19. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
20. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
21. GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon
22. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
23. SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
24. GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
25. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
26. SHANE by Jack Schaefer
27. TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOM by Nevil Shute
28. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
29. THE STAND by Stephen King
30. THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN by John Fowles
31. BELOVED by Toni Morrison
32. THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison
33. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
34. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
35. MOONHEART by Charles de Lint
36. ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner
37. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
38. WISE BLOOD by Flannery O'Connor
39. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
40. FIFTH BUSINESS by Robertson Davies
41. SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING by Charles de Lint
42. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
43. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
44. YARROW by Charles de Lint
45. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H.P. Lovecraft
46. ONE LONELY NIGHT by Mickey Spillane
47. MEMORY AND DREAM by Charles de Lint
48. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
49. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
50. TRADER by Charles de Lint
51. THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
52. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
53. THE HANDMAID'S TALE by Margaret Atwood
54. BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
55. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
56. ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute
57. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
58. GREENMANTLE by Charles de Lint
59. ENDER'S GAME by Orson Scott Card
60. THE LITTLE COUNTRY by Charles de Lint
61. THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis
62. STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein
63. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
64. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving
65. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury
66. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
67. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
68. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
69. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
70. THE WOOD WIFE by Terri Windling
71. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
72. THE DOOR INTO SUMMER by Robert Heinlein
73. ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE by Robert Pirsig
74. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
75. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
76. AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O'Brien
77. FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury
78. ARROWSMITH by Sinclair Lewis
79. WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams
80. NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs
81. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
82. GUILTY PLEASURES by Laurell K. Hamilton
83. THE PUPPET MASTERS by Robert Heinlein
84. IT by Stephen King
85. V. by Thomas Pynchon
86. DOUBLE STAR by Robert Heinlein
87. CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY by Robert Heinlein
88. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
89. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
90. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST by Ken Kesey
91. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
92. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
93. SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION by Ken Kesey
94. MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
95. MULENGRO by Charles de Lint
96. SUTTREE by Cormac McCarthy
97. MYTHAGO WOOD by Robert Holdstock
98. ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach
99. THE CUNNING MAN by Robertson Davies
100. THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie