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Month: October 2023

To Nano or Not to Nano, That is the Question

It’s seven days till the big day — the first day of National Novel Writing Month, which is basically Christmas for a lot of us writers who love to participate every year (like me), and I am wibbling on what to do, like my fellow Turtleducker Kit Campbell talked about in her blog recently. Normally, because of work, I’d say no way, or sign up and attempt it and maybe write a few hundred or thousand words and call it “a valiant effort,” and feel like I tried, but damn, the experience was lost, again, because I couldn’t fully participate like I wanted to. It’s been this way for a long time. I can tell you already that I have an editing job hitting at the end of November. Not too bad, but…I have an ongoing job that got put off a bit due to some extenuating circumstances that needs to get done, preferably before this one hits. I have assorted author assistant things happening that are the usual things, but they take time too. It’s all part of my work, which I love, so this isn’t a complaint by any stretch. It’s just…I’m still trying to carve out the time to write more consistently. I can’t seem to manage it. I am hoping I hit upon the sweet spot, that method that’s been eluding me for literal years since I started my business…so I can maybe do something this Nano. It won’t be 50k like it used to be…

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Chronic Stress

Hello, friends, how are you? I’m actually pretty decent, today at least. We’re taking a few days to just rest. Nothing planned, nothing in particular, just chilling and not worrying about anything. Well, in theory. In practice, my spouse has had two work meetings he hasn’t been able to get out of, the kids have whined about being bored, we had a miscommunication about how long to spend on an art project versus making dinner, and I’ve spent about four hours at the pool, which is a lot of pool but I suppose isn’t too bad. (May also have gotten sunburned. Whoops.) I’ve used the non-family time to read 75% of a novel and 60 pages of a nonfiction book, finish revising a chapter and start another, and take a nap (which was not terribly successful because everyone kept coming in to bother me, oh well). And I am purposefully not thinking about anything that’s been giving me anxiety lately–nothing related to school or volunteer commitments, nothing related to the basement flood or the tornado, nothing related to my furnace failing, nothing related to upcoming conventions. Will I have to think about all those things tomorrow? Oh, absolutely. Dance classes, a book study, an email to the other volunteers, choir practice, the furnace people and the landscapers, my neighbor whose wife just died. But those are for tomorrow. Today, we let ourselves relax. Today, we find joy and comfort where we can. I can’t imagine the chronic stress that we…

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Dabbling in Languages

I’ve always been a linguistics geek, dating back at least to Grade 8 when I did a presentation on the language family tree (none of my classmates found it as fascinating as I did). I still get lost in Wikipedia learning new things. (Did you know that Romanian has a lot of Slavic in it, despite being a Romance language like French, Spanish, and Italian?) And don’t even get me started on writing systems. One of the things I found most fascinating about India, when I visited ten (!) years ago, was that every state had not only its own language (many unrelated to the others) but its own alphabet. Northern India uses Hindi as its common tongue, and southern India uses Tamil, but if they’re going to speak north to south, they resort to English. Which is why there’s more English on the signs than you might expect, even in non-tourist areas… Unfortunately for me, I’m not a polyglot (fluently multilingual), though not for lack of trying. I’ve learned tiny bits and pieces of Klingon (really!), Spanish, ASL, and Hindi. Like most Canadians, I studied French in school and came away with enough knowledge to read food packaging (and occasionally other things) but not to converse fluently — especially in Quebec. I also studied Norwegian in university, enough for me to get by quite well on my first solo trip overseas, visiting extended family in Norway. That meant I could more or less understand written Danish and spoken Swedish,…

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Across Worlds with You, Part 5 by Kit Campbell

Part 1Part 2Part 3 Part 4 Across Worlds with You, Part 5Kit Campbell “I thought you locked this?” Will asked. They were, once again, up on the marble terrace, standing in front of a pair of massive wooden doors. “I didn’t lock anything, the Council did,” Theo said, his voice echoing even more here. “And it was the gate between here and Earth.” Will looked over at Destia, who shrugged. “World gates are weird sorcerer stuff,” she said. “I just stab things.” As if to emphasize her point, she pulled her sword out once more from…somewhere. Maybe it was a magic sword. It didn’t matter as long as it got the job done, Will guessed. “Okay,” he said, just to say something. “Now what?” “Now sorcerer boy has to put in the right coordinates for whatever world he’s tracked the amulet to, and in we go.” Destia took a few steps away and did a few practice parries. “Is that what you did to get us here?” “Sort of.” Very slowly, Theo retrieved a similar bag of supplies that had been left off to the side. “The difference is that I knew how to get us here. The amulet is on an uncharted world.” “Uncharted?” “Like I said earlier, there’s an infinite number of worlds. Until the Darkness came in from one, we didn’t know about any of them. Using the worldslips is a new skill, born of desperation.” Theo began to chalk up the ground in front of the…

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