The Great Tea Debacle: Commencement Speech

It’s midnight, my time. You folks in different time zones can just please yourselves. Also, I am utterly sick and have developed a fascinating voice harmonic which normally only comes out of zombies and other dead things. So my touching and inspiring commencement speech for this exciting and cool contest gives way to video of my son, and me.

I hope that brightened your night.

Good luck everyone, and may the best man named Pete win.

Dancin’ ’round in yer bones

‘Taint no sin,

To take off your skin,

Go dancin’ round in yer bones

Luddite Talk

No, I’m not going to preach at you again, you can lower your hackles.

I’m just going to suggest that, if you’ve read the post The World Is Hollow (and I have touched the sky), then you should visit Lori’s Commune and read my article there, Writing, Pens, and Tea. I like this article. It’s what I always try to articulate when discussing hand writing part time, or full time, with other writers.

Enjoy.

I’m going to go Be Sick And Die on the couch.

Packrattery At Its Finest

Hubby and I have been working on a ton of home improvement projects, all of which will cease on November first. Until then, we’re slaving away, working at dejunking this place. Well, hubby has been cleaning the attic. Wise man that he is, he let me know that there were some books up there that he didn’t touch, but I should go through them.

So today, I went up to the attic and lugged four boxes of books downstairs. Two of these boxes held a ton of writing reference books. Apparently, I went a little bananas during my stint as a member of the Writer’s Digest Book Club in the early to mid-nineties. I have forty-two, count ‘em, forty-two books all about how to write. I went through and read the covers and flipped through them.

I realized that many of these books, I had purchased when I was far less confident as a writer, and in my life in general. I have books on plot, pacing, structure, grammar, inspiration and everything else under the sun. I even have a book on how to build sentences. (Um, think I can handle that one, thanks.)

I finished sorting the books and looked at the piles. I had four books in my Keep pile. Two of them were compilations of advice/interviews/inspiration from actual authors. One of them was a book by literary agent Donald Maas, and the last one was a book of quotes by/about writers/writing.

Thirty-eight books will be donated to my local library. Good riddance.

That’s not to say I don’t love how-to books. I do. I have a ton of writing reference guides, but most of them are more for inspiration, or specific things that I know, as a writer, that I need a little extra work in. Some of them are just fun reads. Others are full of writing prompts or exercises that I like.

Although I am lamenting the huge amount of money I laid out for the books, it feels darn good to be letting go of stuff that I don’t need.

Since Pete “Tagged” Me…

Eh, why not.

8 Things I’m Passionate About

1. My family
2. My marriage
3. My faith
4. Volunteering and
5. Doing my part to bring justice to the thief that stole from my child (and 141 others)
6. My home
7. Writing
8. Crafting

8 Things I Want To Do Before I Die

1. Travel
2. Make sure my death won’t leave a burden on anyone, financial or otherwise
3. See my grandchildren grow
4. Make a difference to someone outside my immediate family
5. De-clutter this effing house
6. Take a cake decorating class
7. Live well
8. Laugh more

8 Things I Say Often

1. I love you.
2. What the fuck? (AKA “What the heck?” when little ears are around.)
3. No.
4. I SAID NO.
5. Are you serious?
6. NOW who’s calling?!
7. Hey, what’s up?
8. Can’t talk. Football.

8 Books I’ve Recently Read

1. – 5. Stephanie Plum books 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12
6. Her Royal Highness (MaryJanice Davidson)
7. The Seven Layers of Design (Christopher Lowell)
8. some trashy romance that sucked

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

1. Don’t You Want Me Baby – Human League
2. Fall – Clay Walker
3. Hotel California – Eagles
4. I Love Rock & Roll – Joan Jett
5. I Learned That From You – Sara Evans
6. Against All Odds – Phil Collins
7. Amazing Grace – pretty much anyone
8. Any of my Christmas music

8 Things That Attract Me To My Best Friends

1. humor
2. kindness
3. intelligence
4. common interests
5. equality (as far as give & take in the relationship)
6. compassion
7. a firm grasp of sarcasm
8. (sadly) a high speed internet connection

8 People I Think Should Do Crazy 8s

1. – 8. Whoever wants to.

Search Terms

Today

mall scavenger hunt parties for teenage 1
useless junk 1

Yesterday

flouncing how to 1
comic strip fish sticks 1
the hill have eyes goggles 1

2007-10-25

The great tea debacle 1
“don’t know why” Nora roberts lyrics 1
heavy metal beards and mutton chops pic 1

Mentally Unbalanced 8s

I’ve been tagged, yo! It sounds much more exciting that way. Jenna tagged Lori, who tagged quite a lot of people, among them myself and Carrie. So here we go. Let’s see if I am any more aware of myself than, for example, flower shop locations.

8 Things I’m Passionate About

1. Family
2. Writing
3. Freedom of Speech/Censorship
4. Doing Good (or failing grandly)
5. Making people think
6. Making people laugh
7. Moderation
8. Ecology/Biology

8 Things I Want To Do Before I Die

1. Write a book like Last Chance to See, about marine biology
2. Write until there are no more stories
3. Travel everywhere
4. Deep sea exploration
5. Sail across the Atlantic
6. Matter (lame? Sure.)
7. Learn more about lots of things
8. Understand

8 Things I Say Often

1. Wossname.
2. You know?
3. Sorry.
4. Where did I put my tea?
5. God, but I wish I’d written that…
6. I love you.
7. Crap.
8. Neat!

8 Books I’ve Recently Read

1. History of Science Fiction of the 20th Century by Frank Robinson
2. Wolf’s Complete Book of Terror edited by Leonard Wolf
3. The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant
4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
5. The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology edited by John W. Campbell, Jr.
6. Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
7. Fallen Dragon, by Peter F. Hamilton
8. 100 Stories, by Ray Bradbury

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

1. Hallelujah by Various (favorite, by Rufus Wainwright)
2. Thrill is Gone by B.B. King
3. Boom Boom by John Lee Hooker
4. Johnny B. Goode, by Chuck Berry
5. Walkin’ In Memphi, by Various (prefer the Lonestar version)
6. Symphony No. 9  by Beethoven
7. Night on Bald Mountain, by Modest Petrovich Moussorgsky
8. Shipping Off To Boston by Dropkick Murphys

8 Things That Attract Me To My Best Friends

1. Intelligence
2. Perspective
3. Humility
4. Compassion
5. Humor
6. Wit
7. Patience
8. Need to understand

8 People I Think Should Do Crazy 8s

1. Kristine
2. Pete
3. MacAllister
4. Cath
5. Tori
6. Carrie
7. Dawn Allcot
8. Ed

(why is this part of the list the same? Er. Because frankly, I don’t know that many people. In fact, this is pretty much it, right there. I know, cop-out, huh?)

Sigh

Occasionally, I am sent awe-struck e-mails from people who have been rendered speechless by my abilities as a writer. They tentatively approach me to ask delicate questions, as if I am some magical font of information which will be of service to them in life. They assume that I am there with Buddha and Stephen King and Neil Gaiman and so on, and I accept it graciously.

This post is to remind all of you that I am human.

Today is my wife’s birthday. I remembered. I’m very proud of this. “dates” as technically made up of “Numbers,” which are things that do not stay in my head very long at all.

But I remembered. So I went online to St. Cloud Flower Shop.com and I placed an order for a beautiful birthday bouquet of flowers, to be sent to my wife at work. I was very pleased. I kept my cell phone handy so I could coyly pretend I didn’t know what the flowers were there for, and then say “Happy Birthday, I love you,” and be the Good Husband.

I got a call.

So I answer the phone, and it’s my wife, laughing, and my heart lifts. It worked!

“Did you try to order flowers?” She asks me.

“Yes. No. I have the right to deny it,” I said. “What do you mean try?”

“You ordered them in St. Cloud, Florida. And the phone number you gave her was the phone number we canceled two months ago, remember? So she called me.”

“I…um…oh. Damn it.”

So there you have it. I am human after all.

I’m going to go hide in the closet, or something.

Ninety Second Story

What the heck, let’s play a game. If you like.

Click the “Read More” part of this entry ONLY when you have at least ninety seconds to devote to it. I am going to ask you to write a story. I will give you the idea below the line. You have ninety seconds to write the whole story, beginning, middle, and end. You can go back and edit it for spelling and punctuation if you like, but nothin’ else. Just a raw, quick story. It’ll be fun.

It WILL be fun! Come back!

This is a meme, or a blog chain, or whatever it’s called, and I tag Lori’s Commune as the next place for you to go and write another ninety second story. She’ll be so pleased, since I didn’t discuss this with her.

Ready?

Another Tea Debacle Address Note

I’m not fond of this being on the front page, but I am convinced it would quickly get lost on the offical Tea Debacle page.

I’m not telling you what it is, but I have a Participant Prize for all members of the Great Tea Debacle. Everyone who would like to get a prize (I already have the winner’s address – MINE!) will have to email me their address. I’ll send the prizes out in early November. (No, it’s not month-long tear gas, it’s useful and fun, I promise!)

Email your address to me at scrappincarrie (at) yahoo (dot) com – if I don’t get your address I’ll assume you don’t want a prize and/or think I’m a crazy stalker. In which case, I’ll get to keep your prize. Neener neener.

The World is Hollow (and I have touched the sky)

Grab a chair and a fresh drink, and one for me too, won’t you? I’m going to rant for a bit.

Stephen King’s On Writing is a terrific book, of course. I’ve read it enough times that I no longer read it beginning to end. I pick it up, I open it randomly, I read something, I go on with my day. I didn’t buy it, and I don’t read it, with the intention of learning how to write more betterer. I came to it knowing how to write (good enough) and what I learn for that skill is mostly unconscious, and that’s good enough for me. I just read it for the delight and the boost in my moral.

Anyway, one quote stands out at me today.

To paraphrase, “Now, I don’t want to say anything bad about my generation, (actually, I do: we had a chance to change the world, and we opted for the Home Shopping Network).”

It’s a fascinating quote. He moves on, straight away, back to the topic and that’s the end of his discussion of his generation, but it crosses my mind now and then, because it’s very true. His generation — which is also my parents’ generation — did have a chance to reshape the whole entire world. And they did. Unfortunately, it was mostly in the shape represented by the Home Shopping Network.

I have no right to judge that generation, nor do I intend to. What can I say? I wasn’t alive yet, I don’t know what it was like, what caused whom to make what choices. People don’t make decisions as a whole. Each individual person makes a decision for themselves. Of course, (thanks to Hari Seldon) we know that sometimes, the decisions are just individual currents which make up a river that flows one direction anyway.

But I can talk about my generation.

Tea Debacle: FYI

Just so we’re clear on this point, since I have a feeling we aren’t.

When someone wins this competition, they will have to give some form of shipping address to the rest of the competitors so that the packages can be mailed. This isn’t one big package showing up. You’ll get a package from each person. Quite simply, there’s no way most of us can afford to ship off a big ol’ package to someone. The postage would be more than my grocery budget for a week.

I want to make sure we understand this, now while we have a week to go for the competition. If you want to have it delivered to work, or to a friend’s house, or whatever, super, so long as you’re willing to give an address to the rest of the contestants, so they can mail the prizes.

And have you seen my stapler?
(my stapler…)

…down from the Rome where it’s begun

(how many posts about Rome can I make today, how can I work the word “Rome” into that song by J.R.R. Tolkien some more, why am I not writing)

As I was writing the previous post on Rome, I thought of some scenes not properly considered which I fleshed out as I was typing. And then I realized that I’m a lot longer than 25,000 away from the ending. I feel comfortable with saying I’m still 50,000 words away from the ending. (God, that’s a long way to still go.)

Shamefully, part of the reason I like it is, I wanted this novel to come in at least at 120,000. Even better at 150k. This gives me room to edit without shrinking the novel into a short story, and I like that.

So what I’m going to do is this:

1) Between now and the beginning of November, I’m going to reach 100k. Shouldn’t be too hard. I’m not far off.

2) For the Tea Debacle, I will use the remainder of my Rome novel, which should be about fifty words. Assuming I finish it, I will then use my novel (the one I planned to start on November 1st) The Nondescript for the rest of the month.

3) December 1st, I will collapse in my pile of winnings and enjoy none of them because my heart will have stopped.

I’m hoping to finish my 100k limit a few days before November 1st, so I can stop writing altogether, clean up around the house, relax, make notes, etc, before I launch into writing full-bore. (By bore, I mean full ahead, not “boring” so leave me alone).

So there’s my plan.

The Rome goes ever on and on…

Last night, my wife asked me, “How much do you have left on your Rome novel?”

The point of the question is that she, a very smart and helpful person, occasionally figures out how many words a day I need to write to hit whatever goal I have, in whatever deadline I have.

I hesitated and then said, “I THINK around twenty-five thousand words left.”

And we talked using that as a guideline, and then we lay quiet (it was just before bed). And as I’m lying there, the Rome novel fills up my head and I start fleshing it out a little further. Not figuring out what happens. I know what happens, from where I am all the way to the last line. It all works, it fits together, I know how the scenes go, there’s nothing to do but dash till the end.

What happened was, as I started thinking more and more about it, I could just see the novel stretching out and away from me, growing longer and longer. Like in the cartoons when you see an oasis across a trackless desert, and then the camera shows it getting further and further away. Just like that.

There’ s a lot of story left to tell. I’m into the climax down, I’m out of the “Middle” and into the “End” of the book, and there’s still so much to tell. So many plots and characters and the entire solution to the problem, the aftermath, and so on, and we haven’t even gotten back to Rome yet, never mind when he actually returns.

“So how much longer do you think it’ll be?” My wife asks as I hesitantly explain this to her.

“I don’t know,” I say, “The first number that comes to mind is fifty thousand more words. I don’t know if that’s right.”

And I don’t. I can see the shapes of scenes which I had figured out and then left alone (because I’m busy in the scene I’m on, thanks) and I realize that there’s a lot left. There’s quiet character moments and battles and trips in boats and people die and farming (yes: farming) and all sorts of stuff. Just sitting here typing this, I thought about a scene that the book needs, but that I hadn’t considered. I don’t know how long that one will be, but it’s another piece.

I could do twenty-five thousand words between now and the end of October. Fifty thousand? Maybe, but I won’t. I’ve already decided that, since The Tea Debacle (which pervades all my posts, these days) is a novel competition — meaning if you finish a Work in Progress and want to keep going, you start your next novel-length project, rather than getting to write short stories and articles. (If we allowed short stories, I would eat everyone alive). — I’m going to use the end of the Rome novel and then start the beginning of my next novel, the Nondescript. The only other option is to let Rome hang until December, which I have no intention of doing.

So. There we go.

What if?

In preparation for the Great Tea Debacle, I’ve been making notes and spending many waking moments preparing for the massive amount of writing I’ll be doing in November. By “massive” I mean “probably several hundred words”. (Which, in comparison to recent months, WOULD be massive. But I digress.)

 One of my favorite starting points is “What if?”. I’ve been doing that a lot for Jericho Road, and came up with a ton of my plot that way. Like most of my stories, this one started with a character. Not even a fully cooked one, just a vague shadow of a person. As I worked with her, (aka daydreaming) she fleshed out and then her story started. A scene of her being accosted in an airport flashed into my head. At first, it was a random lunatic. Then, I thought, “What if it’s not a crazy person?” Then it evolved into her being cornered by a seemingly normal couple who thought she was their long-lost daughter.

Then I thought, “What if she IS their long-lost daughter?” And a whooooooole big long storyline appeared.

I love it when that happens. Sometimes they’re little “What if”s that result in little advances. Other times, the “What if” is the final crack in the dam and the sudden, uncontrollable flood of story.

Moments like those are the ones that reaffirm my writerhood. Which is pretty handy, since I’m getting ready to cream everyone in the Great Tea Debacle.

Tea Debacle Cutoff

UPDATE: sign up is now closed.

Okay, Official Announcement
The official cut-off limit for this thing is 15 people. That leaves a few more open slots, if anyone wants in.

This started as just a goofy thing between a couple of friends in the blog-o-sphere (and I should point out, this is not AW sponsored at all) and it’s swollen fast. I dig it, it’s cool and fun, but…

…it’s also the first time we’ve done this, and there are tricky background details that we have to figure out. So we have to keep it small.

BUT…

We are working out a way to do this every six months. Partially because I like the idea of every six months getting to spend a month intensely writing a novel. So even when the limit is reached this time, it’ll be around again.

15 people!

*goes away to whimper in a corner a bit*

If you want in, announce it in the comments of the page. I also need an e-mail, or a PM, answering the basic questions that have already been answered. Also, I would really like everyone to put up something — big or little — for the pot. Let me know, in the comments, in e-mail, in PM, wherever.

Bum ba bum!

God, I love being a writer.

I’d been miserably working on Rome all day. I’ve been in a black mood all week (and if this were a 13-year-old’s blog, I’d talk about that instead) and Rome was not working properly. I had, in my notes, that a Roman legion was made up of 1,400 bodies, all told. I double-checked before this battle scene I’m about to write and discovered it’s 6,000 which changes nothing but is still annoying as hell.

The battle scene has no point. I didn’t feel like writing it. I was stalled out and in a blacker mood than ever.

Then, as I kept writing all the little bits which lead up to the battle…wham-o! Suddenly, a sub-plot which has been useless and impossible to get into the novel for the past forty pages gels perfectly! It goes in this battle! It gives the battle a point and, because of its nature, it means I only have to focus on the battle for a little bit, and it gives me the scene with the supporting character I’d been trying to get in, and it all fits together, and it has a purpose and, and, and, and…

I’m still pretty grim, but at least at the moment, I’m flying high on the joy of writing.

Honestly, moments like this are the best, aren’t they?

The ironic thing I’ve always noticed is that when these moments occur, it is never new material brought in which fixes the problem, just already-present material that you’ve written or previously tried to write properly considered.

I’d talk more, but I must go write! Writewritewritewrite! Ha ha!

If I keep clearing my snags like this, I’ll happily finish the novel by the end of October, and that would make me a happier camper still.

Also nice: My wife is off tomorrow and Monday. That improves everything.

All right, I leave you with this. If I remember tonight, I’ll also do my other longer post that I would have written, had I not been attacked by a momentary bout of Writing Genius.

Pitiful, pitiful.

Yesterday was the best writing day I’d had all week, and I managed a whopping thousand words. Good words, sure, but not nearly enough. I am really intent on getting my Rome novel done by the last day of October, so that I can start fresh on November 1st on my next novel (for the Tea Debacle, or, as it’s commonly known by the competitors, the Pete Tzinski Tea Relief Donation Drive). Unfortunately, I have a ways to go and less and less time to get here.

My meter, on the side (which is woefully accurate in its update) says 120,000. I have no idea if that’s accurate, though I suspect it’s closer than not.

I can blame the internet for only part of the problem writing. Mostly, that isn’t it. I’m just tired (which, in turn, makes me more inclined to be on the internet with my brain a-frazzle than sitting down trying to work out six thousand words a day).

My wife thinks it’s the weather, which is gray and bleak and wet and unending. I suppose that could be part of it (although as stated here before, I am such a big fan of weather).

My ideal that I’m trying to figure out how to do is to finish my Rome novel with three or four days left at the end of the month, so I can take those days and sleep and play video games and eat silly things and do nothing at all about writing. (Well…you know…maybe some. Because I can’t stop). We’ll see if I manage it.

This was a gloomy post. All it needs it a picture of Eeyore.

On a plus note, there’s a big fuzzy cat on my feet which means they are very warm, and he is very happy, and it’s hard to feel very gloomy at all about anything with a big fuzzy cat on your chilly feet.

Glad I Signed Up For NaNo

I’ve been so busy I didn’t realize just how much I missed writing! I still think it’s virtual suicide to have signed up for NaNo, but I’m glad I did. (So far, anyway…)

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about Jericho Road and how it’s all going to work. My drive to and from work is spent thinking about my characters and how this puzzle will fit together. My lunch breaks are spent thinking over the plot. My actual work time is spent… er, why, working, of course! Ha ha! No sir, I don’t sit at my desk and daydream about my novel instead of concentrating on my job! No way! Ha ha! To even suggest such a thing is an affront!

Anyway, since I’ve been spending every waking moment doing something or another, I haven’t been writing. So NaNo has been a godsend. So has the Great Tea Debacle. I fully expect to lose, but it’s great to have some extra incentive to get my butt in the chair and work on my book. Call me crazy (you wouldn’t be the first), but I’m hoping that if the competition goes well among us, that in 6 months or so, we’ll do our own “NaNo” competition again.

I need the extra push to get myself to actually sit down and write. And I’m so grateful for that push, because writing is one of those things I do for ME. I work for my family and my company, I volunteer for my kid and his school, I follow along to all the sports things for my family… and pretty much all I do for myself is take the occasional shit. (I’m only barely kidding.)

Writing is another beast. It is purely, solely, completely for me. Myself. No one else. At some point, it will be polished for submission, but the actual process? It’s aaaaaaaaall me, baby. I get to spend time with characters I’m bringing to life, and share in their story. The best time is when I am nothing more than a conduit for the characters to tell their story and I feel like I am nothing more than an observer in their lives.

THAT, my friends, is a very special place. It’s a place I haven’t been for a while, and I hadn’t realized how much I missed it. I can’t wait to get back there for a while.

Hopefully after NaNo, I’ll be inspired to visit there a lot more often.

A Glorious Arrival

Just about twenty minutes ago, I went downstairs to the front of my apartment building and spoke to the building manager.

“Did a package arrive for me?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said with a weird expression.  “I don’t know what you ordered, but I think it went bad, it smells funny.”

“Yay!” I said, much to her dismay. She gave me the package, and it did smell. But where, to her, it smelled like badness, to me…it smelled like goodness.

You see the difference there.

Anyway I ran upstairs, which means that I am writing to you sweaty and out of breath, and I opened the package with the nearest sharp object, which was a knife, which slipped a little, because I was not too careful (my finger says hi, and he’s doing fine), and I opened the package.

This package was from Lori. Lori knows I have cats. We have discussed my cats many times.

Therefore, she was not ignorant of the fact when she filled the box full of packing peanuts which are hard to keep track of and which the cats adore. So I had to slow down, because it was like defusing a bomb. The cats were bonkers.

In the package were the results of a bet which Lori and I had back in May, a race, which was practically the First Great Tea Debacle, since it was a debacle and it involved tea. We raced. I won by a huge margin, she sent me tea just now.

So I now have:

1 tin of authentic Pure Ceylon Green Tea, grown in the mountains of (you guessed it) Ceylon. The container is covered in Indian writing. It’s that authentic.  225 grams of the stuff (what’s that in ounces? I have no idea. It’s from foreign, state code FN, that’s all I know.

1 Package of Kamal Tea Masala, which I have never had, which I don’t even know what it is, which I can’t wait to try. I am given the impression that is a flavor powder for my other teas, I will be fascinated to see if it does good things with otherwise undrinkable (to me) teas like Irish breakfast, or Yorkshire Gold.

1 Package of Lasa Special Dust Tea. Again, I have no idea. This is all new territory in the exciting world of tea for me. The impression I get from the back of the package is that it’s Assam based, which I have had before, although I happily expect this to taste nothing like the assam teas I’ve had.

(Some of the powder leaked in transit, so the package smelled like yummy tea, which my landlady thought was weird)

Also, Lori sent me a coffee mug.

It says Note To Self: STOP volunteering for stuff.

Which is really a hoot, coming from her. Obviously it didn’t do her any good, which must be why she sent it to me.

I’d talk more, but I have to go make a pot of tea! (Which is my third pot today! Whoohoo! I haven’t blinked in, like, six hours, ha ha!)