New Logo

This is my new logo.  Let me know what you think! I'm working on improving my web site www.kategeorge.com. If you have suggestions feel free to send them along.

Balancing life in the fast lane

This week I'm taking care of my neighbor (and friend's) children. You may know that I have 4 of my own, add the three neighbor kids - well you can figure it out.  It's a lot of kids. The good part is that the new kids are better behaved than the old kids - and their house (which their mom claims is dirty) is spotlessly clean. Unlike my house, which is not spotlessly clean. By any stretch of the imagination.

Needless to say, I've been spending my time in the clean house. Which is new, not 200 years old, like my house is. 200 years old I mean. Not new.

My house is full of my junk, my kid's junk and my husband's junk. Only my kids and husband would say it's not junk - except for mine. We all agree that mine is junk, even me.

It's hard to write when the house is junky. It's tempting to start throwing things away. I probably should be throwing things away.  But the only way to get books written is to sit and write. So the junk will have to wait. And just so I'm not tempted to deal with junk, I think I'll go write in the clean, new house that is neighborless for the time being.

Happy Birthday - Bob Dylan

It's Bob Dylan's birthday today. I know this because it's also mine. Happy Birthday to me! No, I'm not going to tell you how old I am. Just think 20 years younger than I look. That would do for me.

It's a work in the garden day. My informally adopted oldest daughter is cleaning my car. My by-birth oldest daughter is still in bed. Older twin is helping cook dinner, younger twin is reading a good book, youngest daughter is doing something secret in her room.

I'm having a baked pancake for breakfast - with fruit. The rest are having chocolate chip pancakes made on the griddle. And bacon.  I can smell it. Yum. 

After breakfast I'm putting in tomatoes and peppers. Then I'll start the huge job of weeding the flower gardens. Mulching so those dang weeds don't come back.  Then I'm building a trellis for the raspberries.  

After that, collapsing from exhaustion is on the list.  

Happy Birthday Bob.

The First Cover with segway into a tirade on words

So this is it! Moonlighting in Vermont's cover art. 

I know my last blog was incredibly sulky. I apologize. I've gotten to the point I need to pinch myself. Against the odds, my book is being published. I'm oh so lucky. 

Don't get me wrong, I like the stories I tell. I enjoy writing, and hope with judicious editing they will be written well enough that the words don't distract from the story.

Stories are all about words. Words that create the images we see in our minds when we read. But a poor choice of a word can impair our enjoyment of the story. A word, sentence, image, fact (correct or not), can pull the reader completely out of a story. And sometimes, they never go back.

So, for a storyteller, words are the double edged sword. (Clique, I know. But I promised myself that my blog didn't have to be perfect. Write more, worry about it less is my new motto.)

Anyway, you can't have a story without words or images - if it's a visual like a slide show or movie it could be without words  - but put in the wrong one, make a false step, and boom, story's over. That's a great deal of pressure. I'm happy to say that it doesn't usually stop me from writing. It does slow down the process of editing though. My vocabulary isn't always up to the task of finding the perfect word, search though I might.

The Down Side to the Up Side

Let me first say that this blog is going to seem incredibly ungrateful. I know it. I can't help it. It's the way my mind works. I just can't take good news and keep it good. Well at least when it's about me.  I'm actually very good at keeping my friends' and relations' good news good.

Is that sentence confusing enough for you?

So here's the good news. I've been offered a contract to publish my first Novel!  That is fabulous, exciting, happy dance news. I danced all over the place and called every one I could think of when I found out.  Then I emailed, Facebooked, updated my website and now I'm writing about it. It's fabulously validating and after a year of rejections - totally unexpected. I was hoping, but not expecting when I sent in my manuscript.

So this is what my brain did with my achievement - turned it into a non-event. Why, because I'm not going to see any money for probably a year. Small publisher - no advance. Don't blame them. Didn't expect an advance. But my crazy brain then said, well what good is it to publish if you aren't going to be a financial boon to your family. And that made me unhappy, grumpy and hard to live with. For a few hours.

Until I figured it out. I didn't know what was wrong with me.  Here I'd just been offered a contract, and boom, I'm feeling blue. Stupid, huh? So I started thinking about what I was thinking. What was I telling myself? Only money makes it a worthwhile accomplishment. Even I know that's not right. I wrote a novel! A whole complete novel! (and started a second). That in itself is enough to feel good about.  And now it's going to be published.  Do you know how lucky I am.  So many writers never get published.  Or their 7th, 8th, 9th novel finally gets them in the door.

Now I have to admit Moonlighting isn't my first novel. I wrote a very bad novella when I was in my 20s. I cringe when I think of it now. But that's OK.  Experience helps writing dramatically, and I have lots of that.

OK - so what? What is now that I've figured out how my brain works, I'm not going to let it burst my bubble. I done good. I deserve the happy dance.

Passion

I saw August Rush this weekend. I'd never heard of it. Didn't have a clue. I fell in love. With the movie, with the actors, with the story. With the idea of listening to what the world is telling you, of following your heart - doing what it is you are meant to be doing. Not quitting on your music, writing, painting, passion - what ever it is.

 Jonathon Rhys Meyers performed his role as a singer with such passion. He sang the songs for the movie, it wasn't dubbed with someone else's voice. The energy he channeled into the music was awesome and awe inspiring. If I had that much passion in any area of my life I would count myself as blessed and cursed all at once.

I know it was a movie and very few people actually channel that kind of energy in their real life. But we should.

I've added the soundtrack from August Rush to my play list for my current novel. It's the music I listen to when I'm writing to put me back into the story. If you listen to the same music over and over while you write you eventually get to the place where when you hear the music your brain immediately jumps into your story. Or whatever else it is that you are writing, painting - you get the idea. It's helpful to have a play list to get the story flowing again.

Usually, I choose songs for my play list that have some relationship to the story.  Songs that tell the stories of the people in the book. This time I added the August Rush soundtrack willy nilly. What it's reminding me of is the passion of August's story - the passion I want to pass on in mine. Let's hope it works.

The Feel of Spring

It's been a while since I've written. Between work, yuck, and my husband's reluctance for me to blog about the details of our life I've been short on subjects. Today I'm feeling sorry for myself because everyone else's blog seems so much more interesting than mine.

It's hard to feel sorry for yourself when the day is as beautiful as it is today. I could actually smell the earth warming when I walked at lunch today. A walk which made me late back to work. Luckily life went on without me and all is well.

But now I'm having to work really hard to keep the self pity going. Because on a day like today, who really cares that everyone else is a better writer with more interesting things to say than me!

Stop fooling around on the computer and go for a walk!