New Year's Accomplishments?

What's in a New Year's resolution? The desire to make ourselves into something we're not? The subconscious will to see ourselves fail again and again? I remember as a teenager, seeing a little note on the refrigerator door that said, "Remember your New Year's resolution" written in my mother's neat cursive. Well, you can guess what that was all about, and twenty years later, she's still overweight. I wonder how many people actually make New Year's Resolutions and go on to succeed. If you're like me, you do well for the first few months of the year and then somewhere around the middle of May, June or July, you say screw it!, and go on with life much happier and perhaps a bit heavier around the waist.

Perhaps rather than make these resolutions that never amount to anything and seem to just get us down, we should finish every year with a list of all the things we did succeed at, or made progress with. Then we can look at all of the good things we've done and not feel this heavy burden of having to make the same resolution year after year. So, here's a list I came up with of things (some writing related, some not), that I did accomplish this year, in no particular order.

1. Finished a first draft of a novel. The second draft is a major overhaul, but I did get that first draft done.

2. Read close to 50 books - listed here on my blog. Actually it was over 50, but I just made the list about a month ago and couldn't remember them all.

3. Posted 450 times on AW website - ok this may sound weird, especially since you can rack up posts in no time if you're just talking to people, but most of my posts were actually critiques of other's writing or posts of my own writing. So, I take this to be an accomplishment. I gained a little back bone by posting some of my stuff and I learned a lot about writing and editing in general. Hopefully I helped others out in the process.

4. Made 85% return on my Roth IRA - obviously not writing related, but a major accomplishment nonetheless. I think I got lucky though, I just happened to start investing again at the March low.

5. Taught my daughter the basics of reading. She's doing really great with her phonics and small words, and I think that by the time she starts Kindergarten next fall she'll be on to more complex words.

6. Actually drove to my sister's house! Yes, this is embarrassing, but I have this huge fear of driving on the freeway. I have a horrible stigmatism and the idea of merging frightens me to death. But I was getting sick of relying on my husband when I want to visit family, so I sucked up the courage and actually drove.

7. Work - I wish that I had more to list here, but science is so unpredictable. I spent most of the year trying to do transient transfections in plant protoplasts with very little success. But, the good thing is that I beefed up my cloning efforts so I'm now much more proficient with that, and I'll be trying some new experiments in tobacco leaves that look promising so far. My boss is having my gene patented and we will probably be working hard to get some papers out in the next year, so there's a lot to look forward to.

So do I have things that I want to accomplish in the coming year? You bet I do! But I'm not going to make any actual resolutions - I'm just going to keep on doing what I have been doing. Seeing areas where I can make progress, learning a little self discipline (like not spending all day surfing the web - hint, hint) and patting myself on the back when I make progress. That to me is a much better plan than posting a little sticky on the fridge.

Happy 2010!

Tuesday Teaser -December 29, 2009

This is the conclusion to the first chapter of NIKKI'S WISH. The beginning is still posted in the Tuesday teaser section to the right if you want to review what's been going on. I feel like it needs a lot of work now, especially after reading everyone's great kissing scenes last week. But, enjoy!

Sorry, this teaser has been removed.

Post Christmas blurb

Well, Christmas is over and although there was a mini-blizzard outside (12 inches), I feel like I have a mini hurricane inside my house. Toys - all over the floor. Dishes- all over the counter. The clean up crew went on vacation (were they ever not on vacation?) and now it's time to get back to work. Yes, my kids will be cleaning, cleaning today. They got lots of cool stuff, but it still amazes me how its the little, cheap things that hold their interest. For my daughter, it was her 1$ white erase board with the Disney Princesses on it. For my toddler, it was his 8$ Brown Bear book. He's so cute - he walks around the house holding the book up so everyone can see and recites the whole story. Did I mention he's only two? Well, I knew there had to be one avid reader in the family. My older son actually got really involved with one of his more expensive gifts. We got him a Snap Circuits set where he gets to make cool things by setting up different circuits to a battery. There's a fan, a light, music that plays when you clap. It's probably one of the best educational toys I've bought. The only problem is that now I feel like I have to dig out my old physics book to explain to him what current and resistance are. I was never very good with that kind of stuff. Sometime today I'll probably head over to Target and see what cheap things I can scramble up in their after the holidays sale. I did manage to read a book yesterday, The House of the Scorpion, which was very good. I think I'll have to go on a book shopping spree in January. I have lots of books on my list and the library just doesn't keep what I want on hand.

Well, that's my after the holidays blurb. Hope everyone had a jolly good time with their friends and family and that you're thinking about your New Year's resolutions. Cheers!

Tuesday Teaser December 22, 2009

This is a continuation of last's week's teaser. Everyone was so nice with their comments last week, but really I can take some harsh criticism if you want to give it to me. Even though it is Christmas.... just kidding. To get you up to speed, Nikki has encountered Sam on the top of Minneapolis's Foshay Tower, where he is prepared to jump. 


Sorry, this teaser has been removed.

A weekend of procrastination

So I've been trying for some time now to get back into editing the second draft of NIKKI'S WISH, and this weekend was once again a failure. I'm just stuck, stuck, stuck, and thinking about other books that I want to work on is just so much more fun. Whoever said that the first draft is the hardest probably never got around to a second draft. This time I got distracted thinking about a new beginning for THE LAST CASTRATO. Around 2:30 Friday night I got up and re-read what I had written back in September, then I spent all of Saturday and Sunday redoing the beginning from a different character's POV. I think that it reads a little better, but now I have to come up with some way to mesh what I had done previously into this newer version. As I think about that I'll probably try to motivate myself to do those revisions. In the meantime, I offer up part of the first section that I wrote this weekend. This still needs a lot of tweaking, but any comments, good or bad are welcome. At some point I'll put it up on the SYW section of the AW website, when it's gone through some more revisions. Til then...


Chapter 1: The Last Castrato

After sixteen years of avoiding the shadows, Alex Marron felt that she should have known better. Of course they would be here. Just because this was a ballet theater and not a dark alley in the ghetto didn’t mean that she was safe. The rich were no more immune to evil than the poor. They just hid it better.

A burly man in a heavy wool coat, cashmere scarf and polished shoes stood in the row in front of her, conversing with a person whom most would assume was his wife. Alex knew better. She could see the dark shadows that peeled off his skin like snake scales. Cheater. To the left and three rows down, a woman in a white dress and mink stole was so enshrouded by the dark shapes that her strawberry blond hair looked like a pile of ash. Thief. Across the room, in what she assumed to be the orchestra pit, a man in a tuxedo plucked the strings of a violin, his eyes leaking smoky tears as he looked at one of his fellow, female musicians. Philanderer.

These were just a few of the marked souls that she could see in the packed theater – and she doubted they were the worst. Alex swallowed hard and wished that she could bury her face in her father’s coat like she had as a little girl, when the shadows had been so frightening, the world so big. The shadows were still frightening, but now she was big.

So just deal with it, she told herself. Don’t be such a wuss.

A slight pressure against her hand told her that her father was conscious of her discomfort. When she turned to look at him, his eyes said more than he could ever say with words. Was she alright?

Alex nodded and tried to smile for him. “Jus noorves,” she said, swallowing the syllables like they were wads of gum stuck in her throat. She knew her pronunciation had been off, though she couldn’t hear it. She could only feel it.

He patted her knee before picking up his hands to sign. It wasn’t so dark in the theater that she couldn’t read his lips, but she was grateful for the added interpretation. “First ballet in New York City. But don’t worry. It won’t be your last.”

Alex took a deep breath. No, it wouldn’t be her last, not if she could help it. And if that were the case then she had to get used to being around crowds like this. She couldn’t expect to be a performer and not encounter a few bad souls now and then.