Singing in the Closet

This morning I'm doing my housework and preparing an audition for BYU-Hawaii's production of "The Sound of Music." It would be a lot easier if I didn't live in the faculty townhouses next door to the theater professor and across the way from the orchestra director and various other music faculty. I've closed all the windows and pulled all the curtains, but I still think they can hear me.

Maybe I'll go sing in the closet.

Waiting and Dreaming

I love all stages of the writing process--the mad dash of drafting, the intricate puzzle-work of revision, the patient polishing of line-editing. I like the in-between times too, like right now. This week I'm waiting for test-readers to get back to me with comments on my latest draft, and in the meantime I'm happily dreaming up my next book.

Thankful for the Internet

I love the internet! I use it to connect with friends and family, to find recipes, to do research for my books, to swap critiques with all my writing buddies, and to hunt for a literary agent. Without it, I'd be totally isolated on this little rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

But now, my dear friends, the internet is in trouble.

Congress is right now considering the PIPA bill, which will give the GOVERNMENT the power to SHUT DOWN YOUR ENTIRE SITE if they think you OR ANYONE YOU LINK TO infringes on someone's copyright. This will not stop piracy as the bill's advocates claim. Pirates are smart. They will find a way. The people in trouble are people like us, who value the free exchange of ideas. People who enjoy youtube and facebook. People who don't want internet censorship like they have in China and Iran.

Here are some of the people against the bill: the Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and Public Knowledge.

Who is for it? The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Microsoft, the Copyright Alliance, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

Who's side are you on?

Click here to join the fight! Let congress know you're thankful for the internet.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

My Backyard Farm

I love living in the country. If I move back to the city I'm still going grocery shopping only once a month.

Well, maybe not.

Since I live so far from the usual modern day shopping resources, I decided I'd better start up some home food production. When in the country, do as the country do!

Last Saturday I built this garden box. It's up on stilts to cleverly evade the giant slugs roaming my back yard. So far, the lettuce and spinach are safe in their beds.

We also have a chicken. One chicken. My daughter rescued her as a tiny chick from the neighbor's dog. We were pretty sure the soggy, chewed-up thing was going to die, BUT IT DIDN'T. This chicken has some pluck. And just to prove it, she gave us two eggs on her first day of laying.

To celebrate the advent of eggs, we remodeled the chicken's coop from this:

to this:

Now she's got a rain-proof feed box and twice the yard. Maybe next time we'll put in a swimming pool.

The New Cove

In my last house I had an office all to myself for writing. I dubbed it "The Scribblers Cove" and named my group blog after it. But in my new house I've had to commandeer a corner of the master bedroom.

I like this arrangement better than what I had before. There's a lock on the door, lots of sunny windows, and if I need to I can spread reference materials all over the bed.

What I Would Like to be 20 Years from Now

My mom has been going through a lot of old school papers she saved from when I was a kid. She found an assignment I wrote in 6th grade called What I Would Like to be 20 Years from Now.

Twenty years from now I would like to be a mother of three girls and a baby boy living in Salt Lake City. I would like to have taught school before I had children.

I would also like to be an author of children's fiction books. I'd like to sew in my spare time and raise fish like my mother. I want my children to have a perfect childhood like I did.

I want my house to have three small bedrooms, a master bedroom, and a guest room, livingroom, and kitchen. I would use the guestroom for plants, fish, and a piano. I want to have written a few songs and be a piano teacher.

That was a little over twenty years ago. Since then I've had five children (one girl and four boys), I've written a few songs, I've been a piano teacher, taught college algebra, and that last paragraph just about describes my house except there's one less bedroom, the fish are in the kitchen, and instead of being in Salt Lake City, it's in Laie, Hawaii.

What gets me is that middle paragraph. It's one thing to claim I've always wanted to be a children's author, another thing to see the evidence. That's one big dream I'm still chasing. So here's my long-overdue What I Would Like to be 20 MORE Years from Now:

Twenty years from now I would like to be living in Laie, Hawaii with ten grandchildren, at least that many published books to my name, and more on the way (both books and grandchildren). I would like to be teaching school, playing the harp, going to the beach, and writing life histories for my family in my spare time. I hope to be a perfect grandma, just like my mom.

Pretty Colors

In a recent video conference, author Kathleen Duey told the Hawaii chapter of SCBWI that revision is to re-envision. To see the story in a whole new way.

With that in mind, I'm trying to take a fresh look at my current project with a new outlining method. Okay, yes, I know, outlining is boring. But this method uses pretty colors. Ooooo!

First, I wrote a short synopsis of each chapter. Then I went through and colored the following things:

Problems

Plans

Decisions/Actions

Solutions


And one more thing- I only colored the main character's problems, plans, decisions, and solutions. In looking over my outline, I found out that a lot of the things I thought were important to the overall story were not important to the main character's personal story. I wasn't letting him make enough plans and decisions. Too often someone else took action or solved problems. Dread! I had a passive character.

Can't allow that sort of thing! I'll be sure and put him to work in the next draft.