Squeaky Wheel

This isn't what I was referring to yesterday, but hey, I'll take it!


When I called immigration last week, the lovely woman there told me to call this Thursday, but didn't say why. When I called in the morning she told me to come in at 12:30 to sign some papers, but again didn't give me much of an explanation. I had to wait half an hour before she finally stuck her head through the window and said she just had to make a copy of my FM3 and then she'd call me back.

I had no idea it was ready!

Back I went, where I signed my name a bazillion times, then stamped my thumbprints all over the place (hence the purple thumb in the picture above). She told me a whole list of rules I need to follow if and when I leave the country, some of which I didn't quite understand, but I assume that as long as I let them know when I plan to leave, there shouldn't be a problem.

Now if only we could do something about that other visa...

This is Getting Old

Pa·tience [pey-shuhns] noun: an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay.

Wait [weyt] verb (used without object): to remain neglected for a time.

Frus·tra·tion [fruh-strey-shuhn] noun: a feeling of dissatisfaction, often accompanied by anxiety or depression, resulting from unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems.

In·com·pe·tent [ĭn-kŏm'pĭ-tənt] adj: Devoid of those qualities requisite for effective conduct or action.


If you have no clue what I'm talking about, click here, for starters. And one more for kicks.


Ca·bin Fe·ver noun: Boredom, restlessness, or irritability that results from a lack of environmental stimulation, as from a prolonged stay in a remote, sparsely populated region or a confined indoor area.


The good news is I'll be well-practiced in waiting by the time I start my agent search, and, fingers crossed, any other wait that comes with the publishing business.

The State of My Wips

I thought I'd share a few things that have been swirling through my mind lately.

*****

The title for my current wip, The Other Side, comes from a term Mexicans use when talking about the United States. The call it el otro lado, which literally means the other side. Simple, right? I decided on this title over a year ago and since then have been surprised at how often that phrase comes up in normal conversation. Erica Orloff even used it as her sign-off several times during her Synopsis Boot Camp.

Last week Ibis and I visited his family, and while there his dad asked if I'd been to el otro lado recently. It caught me off guard at first, then I had to laugh. I've gotten so used to thinking of it solely as the title of my wip that I'd forgotten I chose it because it's so common.

*****

I have an unspoken -- well, it was unspoken -- agreement with myself that I will not italicize The Other Side until it's published. Kind of along the lines of not calling myself a writer until I publish something or an author until I publish a book, I don't feel justified referring to my wip as something deserving of proper title treatment.

I suppose I'll have to bend on this when it comes time to query, but I thought I'd let you know why I don't italicize it here.

*****

Back in November I wrote 60K+ words of a yet-to-be-titled wip about a tragedy that strikes a small-town family and how they deal with the aftermath. (Sheesh, generalize much?) I knew when NaNoWriMo ended that I would set aside that wip -- wherever I happened to be -- and continue working on The Other Side. As many writing friends pointed out, you can't query something that isn't finished, and since I believe in TOS, I really wanted to continue with it.

Well, my brain didn't get the memo that we'd switched stories. At least once a week I find myself daydreaming about my characters, wondering how they are and if we'll be able to pick up where we left off last December. My plan is to jump back into it as soon as I start querying, so I guess it's a good thing that this story hasn't strayed too far.

*****

For those of you that have been with me since the beginning (of my blog, not my life. Hi mom and gramma!) you know that my writing journey began with a memoir, currently titled What Do You Mean I Can't Wear a Bathing Suit to the Beach? (Notice, again, the non-italicizing.) It tells Ibis and my story of how we ended up in Mexico and the wacky things that have happened since we moved here.

I shared early drafts with a couple people and cringe every time I remember what I subjected them to. (Sorry mom and Jes!) I set it aside a little over a year ago, when we reached the one year mark of living here. By then I'd gotten the idea for The Other Side and I knew it made more sense to wait until we left to finish the memoir. Into the bowels of the computer it went.

But it won't stay there. Little things keep popping into my head: better ways to start it, ideas of what I can cut (chapters and chapters...), and -- dare I say it -- a funnier voice. I don't really understand how the voice, which is MY voice, can suddenly be more amusing, but it's coming out that way.

What's that? How do I know the voice is funnier? Because, um... well. I've written a new opening.

*hangs head*

I know!! What the heck am I doing, right? I'm supposed to be editing The Other Side, then working on Mr. NaNo No Name, then dusting off the memoir. I'm a very linear person, and while I also happen to be a very good multi-tasker, I generally follow the rules I set for myself and happily plod along.

So what's with this new inspiration?

All I can come up with is I've diverted a lot of my creative juices to design lately and maybe that rattled a few things lose that I'd wedged in a corner. Either that or I've truly got a screw loose.

Thoughts? Are you juggling more than one writing project?

Cinco de Mayo & Tourism

Most people celebrate Mexico today, but I bet if you ask them what they're celebrating, they'll shrug and say, "cheap beer?" I always understood Cinco de Mayo to be a celebration of a revolution, or independence, or maybe some battle, but I never really questioned it, I just went out for burritos and Coronas, maybe a margarita or two.

Since living in Mexico I've discovered that Cinco de Mayo is just another day on the calendar. There aren't any big celebrations (that I'm aware of anyway) -- that was last Friday on Primero de Mayo, May 1st. That's Labor Day and everything shuts down in honor of the workers. Of course, since most things were closed for the swine flu it didn't have quite the same significance this year, but there were a lot more tour buses that day and the beach was packed.

"High season" officially ended at the end of Easter week, and Zihuatanejo has become a ghost town. May is typically one of the slowest months for tourism, and then the "nationals" (Mexicans) start arriving in June and stay through the end of August, when the kids go back to school. It's ironic because just when Americans are donning sombreros and slamming back tequila, the celebration is ending here.

We went to dinner the other night at one of our favorite little restaurants and the waiter told us that they'll be closing for a month at the end of May, but "possibly sooner" if it stays this slow. No more burgers for us.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice to not have to fight crowds at the grocery store, and I love being able to find a parking spot at the market, but I feel bad for all the vendors whose busy months have passed. Now they have to somehow get by with no income, at least until the nationals arrive.


*****

If you haven't already, please take a moment to read my post from Saturday. A friend of mine from college is taking on his local school board to make sure his autistic son gets the education he deserves, and they need help raising the money to pay their legal fees.

Check out his site here:

Owen's Due Process Legal Fund

Editing, Books, and a Little Help

Saturday I officially started my "edits." I've spent the past month -- ugh, that long? -- writing seven new chapters for a subplot I decided to add, and as I finished those last week, it was finally time to get to the real edits.

Chapter One took me most of Saturday and it was only seven pages. Not the best start, but it was also the chapter with the most red ink from my readers. My wip originally started with what's now Chapter Two and I added the new first chapter because the action was actually starting too late (unlike most newbies who start it too early). That meant I'd spent less time tweaking the first chapter, and there were a lot of little details I'd left out.

Yesterday I tweaked some more (I fear this word will quickly dominate my vocabulary) and was all set to move onto Chapter Two when the Red Wings game started. I figured a three-hour break on a Sunday afternoon would be nice, but then they went and played THREE overtimes! In hockey, in the playoffs, overtimes are full-length periods (20 minutes) which means they played over five periods -- close to two full games. Needless to say, I didn't get much editing done after that.

Besides the setback yesterday, I'm really excited to finally be ON with it. I've got my word count to 81K -- woo-hoo! -- and I'm enjoying playing around with things and seeing how much I can improve them. I think I've set it aside long enough that I'm able to cut sentences without cringing, but no word yet on full paragraphs -- or eek! -- pages.

*****

For those of you paying attention, I set aside Reading Like a Writer and I'm not sure if I'll go back to it. The lessons in the book are great and I can see how I might benefit from it, but I cannot stand the literary examples she uses and that makes it hard to read the book. The entire book consists of these examples, which she then deconstructs. Um, no.

I did, however, LOVE The Time Traveler's Wife. Oh wow, why didn't anyone tell me how GOOD it is? It took me over a week to finish because I was just drinking up the words and sentences, the descriptions, the emotions. It inspired my own writing so much that I'm tempted to keep flipping through it as I work on my edits.

I haven't started reading anything new yet, but I did pull Writing the Breakout Novel off my shelf. Several people have talked about it recently and since it still ranks as my favorite writing book, I figured it can't hurt to re-read the sections I highlighted on the first read.

*****

Finally, if you haven't already, please take a moment to read my post from Saturday. A friend of mine from college is taking on his local school board to make sure his autistic son gets the education he deserves, and they need help raising the money to pay their legal fees.

Check out his site here:

Owen's Due Process Legal Fund

Owen's Due Process Legal Fund

A friend of mine from college, Arran McWhirter, is at the end of a due process case against the local school district to ensure that his son Owen, who was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder in April 2008, receives that which the schools are required to provide him by law -- a Free and Appropriate Public Education.

They have incurred substantial legal fees -- over $150,000. They've already paid nearly $50,000 of that but have a long way to go. They are in the process of taking out loans but it still won't be enough -- they need your help. They have set the amount here to be raised on their site at $10,000-- it is a minimum amount that they hope is attainable by May 17th, 2009. Still, they'd like to raise as much as they can up to $150,000.

Owen's Due Process Legal Fund

The Administrative Judge will make a ruling on the case on May 28th. If they are the prevailing party they may be able to recover some of the legal costs. If they are to prevail and do not need the all of the money raised, whatever is left will be donated to Autism Speaks' advocacy program.

This is from Arran:

When your child is diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder and you start to read and do research about what s/he needs, one of the first things you learn is just how very important early intervention is to the management/treatment of autism. And not just early intervention, but intense early intervention. When we left Argentina, we did so because we couldn’t get Owen the early intervention services that everyone was telling us were so important for him. We returned to the US because, we, like every other parent of a special needs child, thought that those services would be available. They are available, at an exorbitant cost. And while we were naive to think that the State of North Carolina would provide most of the services, that the federal government under the IDEA act, had provided children like Owen the right to an education. We were wrong.

The short of our story (which is not a unique story by any means) is that while Owen was found eligible for services under his diagnosis of autism and and IEP was written, he was only offered 3 hours of services a week — a far cry from the intense early intervention that researchers, doctors and educators say he needs. We are positive that Owen will be able to enter a typical kindergarten class with his peers when the time comes but in order to get him ready he needs intervention. He’s getting what he needs, of course, because we have no choice but to provide it to him privately. What else are we supposed to do?

When people find out that we hired a lawyer to fight this they think we are crazy. It’s not a fight we can win, I’m told. It’s not a system that can be easily changed, I hear people say. I listen, and I nod, I tell them that I know, I understand, I get it, I do. But, what else am I supposed to do? What else can I do but fight. I fight for my son, for his rights. Isn’t that my job? This is not an easy battle, but neither is the fight against autism. It’s just unfair that you have to do both at the same time.

I know you don't know Arran, but he's a good person who's just trying to do what's best for his son. If there's any way you can help, even if it's just to forward this message along or post it on your own blog, it'd mean a lot to me and his family.

Thank you.

Magickeepers

Today is the release of my blog friend Erica Orloff's (written as Erica Kirov) Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass, the first book in her new middle-grade series.

From the back cover:

"The one and only Harry Houdini was killed for it, the most powerful magicians have battled for centuries to retrieve it, and even the Ancient Pharoahs feared its power.

What would you do for an hourglass that stopped time?"

And from the inside flap:

"Nick Rostov's life is borderline embarrassing. His dad is well known as the worst magician in Las Vegas. Nick hasn't had a real friend in years. And his report card is not good at all. One F. Two Cs. One B-minus. And an A. In Health. But on Nick's thirteenth birthday his life changes forever. Awakening on the top floor of the Winter Palace Hotel and Casino, he meets, for the first time, his extended family. A family gifted with the power of magic, real magic, exiled from their native Russia, they now hide in plain sight among the neon lights of the Casino.

All the members of the family are powerful magicians, but Nick is unique. Nick has the sight—the ability to see into the past. His gift is the only way to unravel the mystery of the Eternal Hourglass, a magic artifact so strong it can even stop time. But the family's enemies will stop at nothing to get it. Nick knows that he is in for the adventure of a lifetime. . . if he survives."

Sound cool, eh? I admit I don't read a lot of middle-grade fiction, but I adore Erica and I'm willing to break out of my age bracket for her. Just as soon as I can get my hands on a copy... Now run out and buy a copy, or you know, click one of the links here and buy one online.

Read more on the Magickeepers site.