Christmas Adventures

Christmas is an odd mix of chaos and peacefulness ­– I like a little of each.

We’re adding to the Christmas chaos by building a gingerbread house, complete with moose, swans in a pond, a bird house, a smarties path, and a couple of dinosaurs (because who could resist using dinosaur cookie cutters?)

After cementing the house together with caramelized sugar, we discovered the sugar does something most strange when water is added to the hot sugar.

Stuck to the wooden spoon, it pulled out of the pan in a single entity, stretching and morphing into something oddly seaweed-like, dark and crystalline but still malleable. It was formed into a couple of sea creatures, and what looked most like a dead duck. The art of this will need a little work. Discovery and failure ­– important parts of Christmas.

Hope yours is merry,

Maureen

A New Computer

After months of problems with my laptop, and far too many visits to the Apple Store, I finally have a new computer.

(The details: MacBook Pro, a little over one year old, still under warranty. A recurring but sporadic problem turning it on, with attempts to solve it including a new motherboard and then a new top case. This work lead to new problems, and more repairs, including a second new motherboard. When the original problem recurred, they finally gave up and gave me a replacement).

Through it all, I’ve discovered how deeply dependent I am on computer gear.

All I really need to write is a notebook and a pen (well, several, because they persist in running out of ink, or simply running away). Paper, ink – I can write. This is particularly useful when I’m waiting – in an airport, for an appointment, to drive someone else after an appointment. I can sit, and write, and often get some really good work done.

But to put it all together – in a novel – I want a computer, Word, Scrivener, Google. If I had to choose between a library and Google for research, it would be Google all the way. Other writers I know are equally devoted to their gear – rarely as techies – just as people who find these are really useful tools for doing what we do.

And so I will boot up my new baby with great pleasure, move the dock, find my favorite screen image, reload Scrivener (my darling husband did all the other setup stuff), and be thankful.

Maureen

Surges and Stalls

When writers claim they write X amount a day – so many pages, so many words – as if they write at a steady pace, I think they lie. I’ve imagined this as some kind of goal to aspire to, and I’ve totally failed.

I write in fits and starts and surges and stalls, depending on my mood and my health and family events and where I am in the story and, I swear, the phase of the  moon. There are so many elements interacting I never know where I’ll be tomorrow. I just know today – good writing day, useless, okay – and that has to be what it is.

As long as I write every day – good, bad, useless (well, I skip the bad days; that’s just work I have to toss later) – if I write almost every day, I make progress. The story grows, even if it comes in fits and starts. And other projects emerge at the same time, as I distract myself with new ideas. I play and wander and gradually progress. A slow meander, I suppose, that eventually gets where it needs to go. I just need to learn to relax to the journey.

Maureen