Tag Archives: Family

Cold turkey

Yesterday I did something that I haven’t done in a couple of years, at least: I did not touch my computer all day long. It sat unattended during that entire period, wondering when I was going to come back and caress it with my gentle fingers, but bravely kept its silence. Warning: if your computer starts talking to you about using it, you may need medication.

Anyway, there was a dual reason for this, so my absence from the internet was completely understandable. One was the usual Wednesday stuff. At my son’s school, Wednesday is always a half-day, so instead of coming home at 3:30pm, he comes home at 1:30pm. This is the reason that, if you happen to watch my word-count tweets during the week, I usually only write 2,000 words rather than 4,000 words on Wednesdays. If I get lucky and the child goes to his grandma’s for the afternoon, I can get that elusive extra 2,000, but it’s not a guarantee. As I have said before, I really don’t write well (or at all) with other people in the house.

Second reason for dereliction of my internet-related duties: we got a cat.

If there’s one thing most people know about me, it’s that I don’t like cats. It doesn’t help that I am very allergic to them, and consequently can’t even touch them for fear of an allergic reaction. So it may be a little surprising that my family has adopted a feline. When a cat is right there in your house, there’s no escaping its dander. I’m setting myself up for a fall.

The thing is, my wife and son are not allergic, and for years they have been advocating for a cat adoption. I’ve been able to ward them off all this time by reminding them just how allergic I am, but when we visited Animal Control this Saturday to pay our dog-licensing fee, my family fell in love with a little, tan female stray that was just as tiny and friendly as could be. And because I’m not made of stone, I agreed to let the cat come home with us.

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It’s Christmas!

So it’s Christmastime and that means talking about all things related to the season: lights, trees, presents, Santa and so on. Every blog does it, so don’t act surprised that I’m doing it, too. Grab a mug of hot chocolate and read along.

I have always loved Christmas, and this despite the fact that a decade-plus of toiling in the retail trenches made me dread the coming of the post-Thanksgiving calendar. Shoppers are never more annoying, shrill, rude and generally unpleasant as they are once Black Friday hits. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciated their dollars, but their attitudes never seemed to jibe with the spirit of the holidays at all. Christmas is supposed to be a time of celebration, not a grim devotion to acquiring gifts during the busiest shopping season of the year. Seriously, buy your presents in the dead of summer if you want a more relaxing experience.

In years past I have, admittedly, overdone Christmas. I’ve given gifts all through the week leading up to the holiday and I’ve given after-Christmas presents once the day has passed. Now that I have less disposable cash, I don’t do this anymore, but I doubt I would do so even if I were rolling in dough, mostly because I’ve realized what a Christmas freak I looked like.

I’ve taken the pedal from the metal on other issues, as well. I don’t put up outdoor Christmas lights anymore, largely because they’re such a hassle. My son loves lights and my wife wants lights, so I tell them they should take on the task, but even they aren’t willing to put the time or the effort in. As I have given up on the whole process, I can completely understand.

Other traditions remain firmly in place. The tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving, no exceptions. I still do all my (online) Christmas shopping on the first of December, thus freeing the rest of the month for more pleasurable pursuits. And my son is frequently reminded that Santa has invisible security cameras and he watches all the time to see if he’s being naughty. This doesn’t actually stop him from being naughty, but we try.

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Organizational issues

I am an extremely organized writer. I’ve discussed much of my method before in this space, but I think it’s worth talking about again in a new context like this one. Bear with me if you’ve heard it before.

The first thing I do is come up with an idea and (usually) a title. The idea can generally be expressed in a single sentence, or no more than two. At that point I create a simple, seven-line outline into which I plug the major developments of the book, breaking the plot into fourths and establishing major turning points and the climax.

Once this stuff is done, I open up a fresh document in Bean, my favorite word processor, and start writing a chapter-by-chapter outline. This outline essentially consists of a paragraph or two of text describing the action of the chapter in question, plus any particular dialogue that occurs to me early in the process.

Now that I have my outline in hand, I can start writing. I put out no less than 4,000 words per day, five days a week, which generally means I’m done with the whole shebang — assuming I don’t skip days for whatever reason, at least — in about four to five weeks. I could not work at this pace without all the careful organization that comes beforehand, as I’d be kicking around in the dark trying to discover during the writing process what I’ve already established in my outline. I don’t enjoy writing surprises, and this method keeps surprises to a minimum.

Given that I’m so fastidious about my writing, it might astonish you to learn that I am spectacularly disorganized in virtually every other area of my life. One look around my house and you’d think a schizophrenic lives here. Or three schizophrenics, seeing as how I don’t live alone.

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