Author Archives: Autumn

Paging Mr. Incredible

While we were over visiting his godparents yesterday, Liam found a copy of a recent movie magazine with a picture of Brandon Routh on the cover. His godmother held it up for him.

“Look, Liam!” she said. “It’s Superman! See: blue, and red, and yellow, and a big S.”

Liam looked at the picture seriously for a moment before pointing at it, breaking into a delighted smile, and saying, “Dada!”

Yeah, I think your Da’s pretty awesome too, kid. More along the Mr. Incredible line than Superman, but hey, you’ve demonstrated a decent understanding of the kind of guy he is. And that’s also awesome.

Got Writing?

There are many writerly folk who swing by here, so I’m posting a note about Jan’s second annual August Writing Challenge.

Here’s how Jan presents the project:

Jan’s August Writing Challenge
Write something every day in the month of August.

Sounds tough! What do I have to do?
Write. Something. Anything. Any length. Prose or poetry. Every day. For a month. And share it.

Sounds cool! How do I sign up?

* Join the august_writing community if you’re not already a member [Note: if you don’t have an LJ account, you’ll need to set one up so that you can join the community. It’s free, and you don’t have to actually use the journal; heck, I don’t, I only use it to join communities like this and leave comments!]
* Link to this post in your LJ or journal so that we can get as many people involved as possible
* Post either your writing, or a link to your writing, to the community every day in August, starting on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006.

Sounds simple! Are there any other rules?
Nope. Well, not really. It has to be creative writing – prose or poetry, of any any length, on any subject. Stuff you would normally be writing anyway counts (so, for those who write serials, that counts) but stuff you write for your job doesn’t. But it can be anything. Short fiction, short-short fiction, essays, character studies, stream-of-consciousness, writing exercises (like last year I’m going to try to post a different writing exercise every day for anyone who would like to use it), sections of a larger work you have in progress, etc. Anything at all, so long as it’s a self-contained piece of writing that you did that day. It would also be really cool if you could read and comment on a couple of other posts every day.

The problem I ran into last year was the stuff-you-write-for-your-job-doesn’t-count, because after working with the green witch rewrites and a six week old baby, there was no time left even for little bits. I think I managed to post things on eight days out of the thirty-one. This year may or may not be different, since I’ve got another book to deliver this fall. I’m going to give it my best shot, though.

It’s a terrific exercise, because everyone shares tips and tricks and supports one another in getting something, anything out every day. People who didn’t consider themselves writers joined and surprised themselves at how much they accomplished. We all saw some awesome stuff, saw some new projects develop, and shared insight into the creative process. Wander over, take a look, sign up and join the fun!

Liam Update

Today he cut not one but both upper one-year molars.

No wonder it’s been so painful for everyone around here over the past ten days. And today was a special sort of insane. I discovered the first one in the top right gum around lunch. Then jteethy came to pick us up in order to whisk us over to share the afternoon with him and Paze (thank you thank you thank you for the change in scenery and company!), and I discovered the second one on the other side. It literally came through an hour later.

Brave little guy. There have been lots of tears and hugs today, in amongst the screaming and blissful unconsciousness imposed upon him by the car as we took a long, long drive along the Lakeshore. Lots of growing accomplished.

The other big news of the day: We set up the car seat to face forward. He’s definitely a big boy, what with molars and sitting so that he can look in the direction we’re headed like the adults do, and eating Popsicles like he did on Sunday (very fun, even though he kept trying to hold the cold ice part instead of the stick and dropping it because it was, well, cold) and grilled cheese sandwiches too (first one yesterday — it’s cheese! and toast! awesome!).

Words Words Words — Really Big Ones

This is spectacular:

The city of Montreal is about to adorn its streets with some literary graffiti.

Starting in September, the words of 10 Montreal writers will be painted on buildings, billboards and brick walls around town.

Lines from famous Montrealers such as Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Michel Tremblay and Monique Proulx will go up in places where the public can read them.

Full story here.

Bliss

I am in complete and total gourmand heaven. Rajura introduced me to Juliette et Chocolat today at lunch, a creperie and chocolaterie on St-Denis street. My tomato-mushroom-Gruyere crepe was perfect, and the mi-amer chocolat noir to drink was literally like drinking thick, smooth, liquid chocolate. It took forever to pour into my cup!

We talked and talked and talked, and would probably still be there if I hadn’t realised that I had to get back to the public lot at the metro station to reclaim my car before my parking pass ran out. I made a quick stop at Archambault to pick up a CD but they didn’t have it. They did, however, have a big promotional display of francophone Quebecois(e) artists who record under the Tacca label, so I got the only Jorane CD I was missing for ten dollars. A good buy, and really what I was in the mood for, I discover now as I listen to it.

Now I’m going to log off and unplug the computer because we are having a delightful thunderstorm. Good thing the book’s at a point where I can work things out in my notebook.

In Which She Does Math And Is Pleased With The Result

I’ve worked it out.

To meet deadline, I have to write 3,500 words per week. If I only work three days a week (also known as the days Liam is at daycare or with his grandma), that’s a quota of 1,200 words on each work day.

(Anyone familiar with my average output laughing yet?)

Breaking down the estimated word count, it works out to around twenty pages or 5,000 words per chapter, although that’s always flexible. After all, this is just me taking the estimated length and dividing by the number of chapters I’ve sketched out. There’s about three thousand unassigned words left over that I’m leaving free, since I have a bad habit of creating monster chapters that must commit mitosis in order to maintain thematic unity and to allow the poor reader to (a) take a break, and (b) think straight. I always worry about making the target MS length, and I shouldn’t because every time I create an overabundance of material and end up having to trim it down. And when I get the CEM back for rewrites I’m always asked to expand certain ideas, which also produces more word count. It looks like this time, I may have to worry about keeping the MS below target length from the very beginning! For example, there are lots and lots of rituals in this book. And spell-type things, and meditations. And some lists. These always take up more room than I expect them to. I’ve given myself plenty of time in which to do it all, as well.

Focus, focus, focus. That’s still the key.

My table of contents is finished. I think I’m going to open a new file, name it by the book title, and start throwing ideas down because they’re coming thick and fast. And at some point I’m going to call for questions and ideas from all of you as well. (Well, those of you associated with the topic, anyhow.)