Bethanie's Brain

OK, so it's been a while since I last posted. But we are drowning here. Drowing in more ways than one. Drowning in life due to soccer, school events, and life events (we have a family wedding this weekend, so everyone's in town and wants to visit). Drowing in resposibilities at the Evil Day Job, which is getting perpetually stranger every single day... Oh, yes. And it's raining. It's been raining all week. We're supposed to have "possibly severe thunderstorms" today (so the wedding won't be outside this afternoon; poor sister-in-law-to-be :( And actually, we get a break from drowning in soccer today, since the fields are closed, which is good since because of the wedding we'd have been running around like crazy all day. This way we're only running around like crazy half the day....) I don't even want to talk about school - my school - and the test I have tomorrow and how I haven't even read the chapter yet, let alone done any studyi...

So The Husband and I got to go on one of our very rare movie dates this afternoon and picked Watchmen. Yaay for the small miracle of movie dates! Almost 30 bucks and 3 hours later, I'm still sort of shell shocked. It was violent. It was graphic. It was gory. It had waaay too many flashbacks and moved waaay slower than I would normally tolerate and yet I've come away from it thinking it was great. I'm struggling to put my finger on why. I mean, normally any movie that moves that slow has me yawning, bored and pissed off that I just spent 30 bucks to be bored halfway through and hoping it will end. Watchmen somehow eluded this fate. I think there are a number of reasons for this. For one thing, there was a giant, blue man walking around totally naked for most of the movie. Two thumbs, way up! ;-D Seriously, though... The characters had enough depth to keep me interested. Maybe not as much as I usually like, but there were interesting internal conflicts going on. There were...

So a few weeks back a Big Editing Company notified me that they wanted to hire me as a freelance editor, but didn't want me to edit in the field where I actually have editing experience -- they wanted me to edit in the field I have a degree in, even though I haven't done THING ONE in that field for 14 years. I didn't know what to tell them because I was so irritated with their lack of respect for the actual work that I DO and their apparent faith in a piece of paper given to me by my undergraduate university so long ago that it is now lost in the mists of time. So I did what came natually: I ignored them. Yesterday they emailed me back, ever so politely requesting that I send them the other stuff they need for me to start editing for them and again suggesting that I edit in that other field. Perhaps they're hard up for editors in that particular field. I don't know, I don't really care, and my inclination is to ignore them again. However. Drollerie Press ha...

Or: Maybe Not. So I decided last night that I was done. After reading so many good books lately while occasionally glancing at my growing pile of pathetic, feeble - and entirely unfinished - attempts at writing, I just gave up. "Fuck writing," I said. "I'm all done. I'll just read from now on. And edit. And maybe review some stuff." As I left the house at 6 AM this morning, I was resigned to just driving. No more plotting on the commute. No more conversations with my characters during the inevitable stop 'n' go near Trinity Lane. No more feeding Dorothy the Muse with my new favorite song while going 80 in the slow lane. Just no more. Dorothy apparently took offense at this decision and smacked me upside the head continuously the whole way to work with all kinds of things I've been stonewalled on for the past several weeks. Figures. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I may just ignore it and go ahead with the plan to take up s...

So Fictionwise - and it's little brother eReader.com - have been acquired by B&N apparently. I've been an eReader.com customer for ... well, a really, really long time. For me, the initial draw to ebooks was based on 1) convenience (lots of books available all the time, all in my purse on an itty-bitty reading device), 2) ease of storage (ebooks take up no physical space - a good thing in a small house), and 3) PRICE. PRICE was the big one (that's why it's in caps, heh-heh). Ebooks, back in the day, were cheaper than regular books (paperbacks or hardcover). The people who produced ebooks seemed to understand that since they aren't having to cover the cost of paper, printing, shipping, storage, etc., it ultimately costs them less to produce an ebook and hey, why not pass that savings on to readers. OK, yes, sure - they have to maintain servers and websites and such, but these days, most booksellers have to do that anyway. The price has gone up over the years,...

... every time I HAVE time to write, I find a 1001 other things to do instead and ... every time I'm up to my eyeballs in everything else, all I want to do is write? Why is that, huh?

I really have nothing to say, but I haven't been writing-writing much lately, since I'm deep in the thinking part of Think Sideways and/or otherwise occupying the brain with kids, food, laundry (and more laundry!), other people's writing, and various body parts (anatomy & physiology, people! heads out of gutters, please...), so my fingers are itchy and I'm here to scratch them, I guess. Anyway, I spent the entire weekend unplugged. I never even took my laptop out of the backpack I use to haul it to and from work-work. It was kind of nice. I got to sit in different chairs (our wireless router died 2 years ago and we haven't replaced it yet, so being online means being chained to my desk with a little blue cable...). I got to read One for the Money by Janet Evanovitch . Never read anything by her and it was GREAT! Especially as a study in characterization. Seriously. I think it was some part of Joely's Character Clinic that mentioned if you can remove all...

OK, I can tell from the way my face is breaking out that I am PMS-ing and it is, therefore, entirely possible that I am not being completely rational. That out of the way: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!!???!!!!!!!! Honestly. All I want to do is set up my freelance editing business and edit stuff that I want to edit. Is that so hard? It seems to be. Here's the sordid story: I'm trying to set up a contract with a company in a non-English speaking country and can't seem to get them to understand that while, yes, I have a degree in a certain social science, I do not really consider myself qualified to edit in that field because I have done nothing in it for the last FOURTEEN YEARS . Meanwhile, I have oodles and oodles of experience editing in certain areas of biomedical research, areas in which I have undertaken a great deal of training, formal and informal, but which apparently - because I have no piece of paper to declare me competent in that area - counts for nothin...

I thought the Character Clinic (CC101) Joely hosted over the weekend was fabulous! Even though I didn't win anything, I learned a ton about how to build characters and what I like about them - among many other things. And it's the "other things" that, for some reason, are really churning around in the ol' brain right now. Two interesting things occurred as a strangely direct result of CC101. One, I'm not prepared to discuss yet. It's still churning, and it ain't turned to butter yet... The other is the big one for me (a big pain in the ass, that is...): theme. Stories have themes. They just do. Any good story worth the paper or pixels it's printed on, anyway, has a theme, an overriding, overarching thread of wisdom that guides the ultimate outcome. That's how I define it for myself, anyway. I flat-out SUCK at theme in my own writing. There are reasons for this. First of all, I blame the fact that as a reader, I don't like to analyze. ...

OK, like I said several posts previous, yapping about how great my own characters are gives me the willies. But in the spirit of CC101, I will do it anyway. :D OK, I'm not really going to talk about how great they are, but I will tell you the story of how two of my characters came to be. First, let me introduce Fenn and Kesera, the two main characters from my very own Novel #1 (of spaghettified plot fame...). Fenn is Prince Charming with a tragic past and a drug problem. Kesera is a bi-racial damsel causing distress (to pretty much everyone around her). I like them a lot. They are very patient with me, thankfully, so perhaps someday, when I become capable of plotting my way out of wet paper bag, I will manage to get their story told. :) Anyway. The story of the way they came about as characters is sort of interesting (at least I think so), so I thought I'd share it. It goes like this: I saw this movie, King Arthur , which I absolutely hated almost every minute of (despite t...

I think my favorite thing about reading is being in a character's head. Nothing is quite like it. Movies, for instance, are great and I love them, but they can't ever come close to the experience of almost being someone else that you can have when you're reading a story in a well-written, really tight POV. My favorite example to give of this is Greg Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. It's a great, great series and an amazingly told story. Four books follow a handful of characters caught up in a battle between good and evil. In a nutshell: there are kings, queens, princesses, knights, demons, aliens, assassins, religious cults, magical creatures, and dangerous secrets as old as the world. (Yeah - it's awesome.) What I really love about it, though, is how the POV switches between the 4 or 5 main characters - a young, very headstrong princess; her mother, the queen; a knight in the queen's service; the "holter" in charge of the king's fo...

Yes, it's me again with yet another entry for the Character Clinic! I feel like I'm being totally obnoxious posting this much. Oh, well. :) This post is another in honor of Joely and her fabulous idea, because it was she who introduced me to all the wonderful characters in Lynn Veihl's Darkyn series. She held a contest, see, and I won a copy of Twilight Fall . Yaay! Winning is good, but being introduced to a fabulous series of books you never knew existed is even better. I liked them so much, I went out and bought them all, and now I am merrily foisting them on everyone I know. :D Anyway - the characters are what make this series so interesting and keeps me coming back. (That and the writing is really, really excellent, which pleases the editor side of my brain no end and is probably a topic for a whole other post, but whatever.) The characters are memorable, because they are so vividly portrayed -- each one has a very distinct personality. More to the point of my post...

Another entry for Joely's Character Clinic : These are my three favorite characters from the book "Wizard War" by Hugh Cook, which was published in the UK (and possibly Aus and NZ) as "The Wizards and the Warriors". Fabulous book, fabulous author, freakin' shame that it's out of print, in my opinion, and freakin' CRIMINAL that most of the rest of the books in the series Wizard War is part of never even got published in the US, because it's some of the best magic, world building, characters, and plot EVER and .... Erm, anyway.... back to the characters... Miphon. I love Miphon. And not just for his green eyes, I promise. Miphon is a wizard of the order of Nin, a weak-ish order of wizards in his world and "lives as as traveling healer with no fixed abode". He is often called a 'pox doctor' and regarded with something just above scorn by his colleagues (two other wizards of more powerful orders), but we instantly like him as soo...

Entry Number One in Joely's Character Clinic : Well, since I think Joely is so clever for thinking this Charcter Clinic thing up, I thought I'd start off with one of her own characters! Hah! Gregar. Ah, Gregar... where to start? Well, I'll start with where you can find him: Gregar is a character in Joely Sue Burkhart 's book The Rose of Shanhasson . (Go on! Go get it! You'll be glad you did, I promise!) I always love a conflicted character (as you'll discover in coming posts...) and Gregar is definitely that. He is driven. He has a mission and a duty, and he is honor-bound to fulfill them. However, in his secret heart of hearts lurks an undeniable need that conflicts so deeply with all that honor, that Gregar would pretty much rather die than allow himself to have it. Excellent stuff. And oh my, let's not forget: he's dead sexy and dark and wickedly dangerous -- in other words, three of my favorite things! :D In all honesty, though, what really mak...

(This one's a rambler, guys, sorry. This is what happens to Bethanie when she is subjected to all work and no play...) I've been meaning to post about ebooks - at length - forever. Of course, my life is such a vortex of unending activity, I have yet to really get around to it. And since I'm in the middle of cooking supper, I don't really have time now either, but I must put in a plug, because I'm so... oh, I don't know, giddy , I guess, over my latest discovery/acquisition/experience. :-D Here's the story: I've had a Palm OS PDA for years and years and years. I've upgraded from a Handspring to a color Handspring to a Tungsten E and - finally, a year or so ago - to a Treo. I love them - love them, love them, love them . I mean, I'm practically evangelical about them. Really. Don't get me started on how great they are unless you have 30 or 40 minutes for me to show you mine and all the wicked nifty things it can do. Including my all-time fa...

OK, it's been a scandalouly long time since I've posted ANYTHING here... terrible! I have excuses - dozens, in fact - but I'm sick of dealing with them to the point of not wanting to re-hash them here, even if it means missing out on bitching about something. :D Anyway, I've been working on some posts that are scheduled for next weekend for Joely's Character Clinic , and it's been interesting - and educational - picking apart why I like certain characters so much. There are some striking similarities, especially when it comes to male characters, heh-heh... :) When it comes to my OWN characters, however, the brain gets all shy and tongue-tied and won't cough up anything. Weird. I suspect this stems from my rather vast insecurities about my own writing -- it seems presumptuous, at the very least, to expound on what makes my own characters so great and/or what clever tricks I use to add depth to them and make them memorable, when not only have I published no...

Tuition & Fees: $600. Required Book & Lab Manual: $335. Assorted Notebooks, Pens & Binders: $25. Going to Class at 4AM in My Pajamas: Prrrrriceless! .

...so I can walk off it, 'cuz I could really use a dip in the drink today. It's been a helluva week. It started with a list of 5 papers to edit, submit and/or do something! with (as-soon-as-possible, thank-you-please), which soon grew to 7, then 8, then 10 , which is as many as I normally deal with in a month. Add to that another massive data entry project (which apparently counts as editing, don't ask me why...) and -- drum roll, please! -- a page proof! I knew it! I just knew there would be a page proof this week, since I'm insanely busy. There's always a page proof when I'm insanely busy. Never on a slow week. What fun would that be, anyway? And then, there are the pirates. I got frustrated with them for going full-blown novel on me, when all I wanted was a short story, so I fussed, pouted, and was generally very grumpy until they agreed to tone it down. And then I tried to cram them into a 500-word flash piece. That sorta worked, because I actually FIN...

So I’ve already used up 3500 words of my 5000-word limit on the pirate story. That’s good, in a way, because I’ve written a whole bunch in the last few days and I don’t hate it and I love the characters, but… I love the damn characters and – totally fucking predictably - they’re taking me WAY deeper into their adventures and lives than I have room or any business being in a short story. I mean, I could write 5000 words worth of just backstory ! Seriously, if I manage to tell the story they’re wanting me to tell in less than 20,000 words, I will find a fucking plank and walk off it. Gah! Part of the problem with me writing short stories, I think, is that I don’t read nearly enough of them on a regular basis. I just don’t have a good enough sense of how they’re put together to successfully put one together myself. I’m making an effort to correct that, but … well, there are only so many minutes here and there in a day during which I am not required to be doing something else. *exas...

It is not pretty. It is not even "right" most likely. But for now, I don't care. It's done! It's done! IT'S DONE!!! I can move on. I can do something else now! I've started a pirate story... ??!? I know: pirates - WTF, but cool! I'm hoping to cram it into 5000 words and submit it to Membra Disjecta for their March issue. I'll let ya know how that goes... (Short stories are definitely not one of my strengths as a writer ...) .