Writing Prompts and Over the Top!

Michele at Southern City Mysteries has begun this diabolical new series called Writing Prompt Wednesdays. The prompt was "How tides come crashing...". These things get into my head and I have to write something. It doesn't matter that I don't have time, that I should be doing a million other things, but I can't help myself. So here's the two bits I came up with.

First thing that popped into my head:

Green water crashed against the stone that had once crowned a mountain. Waves wore it down, tides moving in and out, commanded by the moon, thousands of days; thousands of years…until the strange symbol carved into the basalt vanished.
When the last mark was scrubbed clean by sand, the stone cracked, cutting into the Earth, slicing her to bedrock. Darkness wedged its way out, night without stars--and the tides stopped.

That was kinda bleh. I lost interest and went with this instead:

I love the feel of ocean tugging at my legs and crumbling the sand beneath my feet. It wants me to give up the land and come out into the deep to play, like a child begging me to see her toys. I can never say no.

I dive beneath the next wave and swim past muscled guys tossing a ball. It rolls my way, and I pause long enough to toss it back. They smile enticingly, but the ocean is more insistent, sending water up my nose for ignoring her.

I keep going, arms slicing a path through swells, until I’m as deep as the surfers who straddle their boards waiting for the right moment to catch a ride. I’m right where I want to be, where no one can see me. I always choose a beach without lifeguards. As soon as someone notices my head go under at the edge of dark blue water, they freak out, and would-be-heroes push their kayaks into the waves to search for me. They freak out even more when I don’t come up again.

I wish I was a mermaid. People would see a flash of rainbow scales, a flip of my tail then shake their heads, certain they had mistaken a dolphin for a girl. But dolphins don’t have scales. So, in their secret places they would thrill, believing for an instant that fairy tales are real, that Ariel can get her prince. They forget that in the real story her only choice was the agony of daggers in her legs or the agony of a dagger in the heart of her lover. My choice is worse than that.

I can’t become sea foam and live on in the songs of my sisters. The ocean is my sister, and we have a cruel father. No, my choice is not who should die, but who--among all those billions of beautiful, amazing, innocent people--will live.

Ok. Done now. Thank you for the exercise, Michele, but I'm going to have to put hands over my eyes when I'm reading Wednesday blogs from now on, so I don't get sucked in. Just kidding. It's a terrific idea, and I'll be back!

My other item of business is a beautiful and very very appreciated award from Crystal at Crystal Clear Proofing. I've always wanted this one! Thank you! You must read her blog if you want to know more about grammar, punctuation and all that important stuff. And, if you're a writer, you had better want to know.

For this award, I have to answer the following questions with one word. Here goes:

Your Hair? - brunette

Your Favorite Food? - tacos

Your Hobby? - reading

Your Fear? - spiders

Your pets? - none (I am ruled by two cats, though)

Something You Aren't? - male

Where Did You Grow Up? - everywhere

Your Life? - lucky

Your Mood? - energized

Your Favorite Color? - blue

Now, the reason it took me a couple of days to pass this on is that I really wanted to put some thought into my picks and try not to give it to people who already have it (but I fear I may have failed there). The very deserving winners are...

Dezmond - Hollywood Spy

Lynette - Chatterbox Chit Chat

Jemi - Just Jemi

Congrats you guys! And thanks again, Crystal!

Sugar Doll Award

The lovely Southern belle, Michele, over at Southern City Mysteries gave me the Sugar Doll award. Thank you! It requires me to say ten things about myself:

1. I love Southern accents and slip into one whenever I think about the good 'ol US of A. I have family in Georgia and Arkansas, and I copy my stepdad's accent whenever I'm on the phone to him. I can't help it, and I'm not trying to be rude. He never says anything, so maybe he doesn't notice. That leads me to...

2. I'm bad at accents. If anyone's ever seen "Don't Tell Her It's Me", I'm as awful as Steve Guttenberg was at the start of that movie.

3. I was raised by my great grandmother, so I say "hold your horses" and "are you some kinda wise guy?" like those phrases are still in style.

4. When I was three, I used an old baby carriage to build a house for my cats. When I ran to my grandma saying "Come see my cat house!", she was not amused. I never understood until years later when I learned a cathouse was a brothel .

5. Also because of my grandma, I love the Andrew Sisters and Patsy Cline.

6. I never liked the Lawrence Welk show.

7. I was forbidden to watch The Addams Family. Apparently, the way Gomez spoke French and kissed Mortisha's arm was "filthy".

8. I watched it anyway when Grandma was busy in the other room.

9. My Grandma, Ruth, was the greatest parent and role model anyone could ever have had. She wouldn't even kill a spider, and she nursed people as well as wild animals. I have a photo somewhere of her bottle-feeding a white-spotted fawn.

10. I still miss her.



All right, wiping my eyes now. Back to business. I'm passing the Sugar Doll award on to Elizabeth Spann Craig, Tabitha, Anne Riley, Chase, and Heather. Congrats!

I'd rather be here reading blogs and posting, but I must now drag my sorry, summer cold suffering self back to work (I know alliterations are bad, but I couldn't resist. All the S's go with my sniffles).

Confidence

I just got the notes on my second manuscript back from Maz, my favorite test reader (she's my fave cause she says nice things without asking for a bribe). I'm 40,000 words into my third book, so I'd forgotten all about that last one. It was amazing, flicking through 300 pages that I barely remembered writing (it's not because I was Hemingway-intoxicated the whole time, I simply tend to focus on the present and forget the past until it makes an appearance).

Maz said, we (can't forget to mention my co-writer husband) had "gained much more confidence as writers.... The writing felt freer and flowed a bit more naturally. I also got the sense you were having more fun with the whole process." A reader can see all that in a book? Yikes! It feels like my soul really is laid bare, and I'm beginning to understand J.D. Salinger's desire to hide his manuscripts in a cupboard somewhere.

That last manuscript was tons of fun to write, with a sassy heroine uncovering a mystery in a fantasy setting of my own devising. It makes me worry a bit about my current WIP, though. I've tried to push myself further, and sometimes I'm nervous about being able to meet my own expectations. I hope that won't translate into writing that makes it seem I'm trying too hard? I don't want the prose to feel forced, but I want to do the best I can to achieve that gleaming vision of the perfect book I see in my head.

When someone gets published (I don't like to say 'if'), they've often written five or six books before that. Or so I've read. Of course, there are some lucky people that make it their first time out. I'm beginning to think it's all about confidence and finding your voice as a writer. Some do that quicker than others.

How about you? How many manuscripts do you have stashed away? How many did it take you to get published? If you're unpublished, like me, have you found your voice yet? Do you feel confident and does that come out in your prose?

As Promised

Crystal at Crystal Clear Proofing made a new award, which I am happy to accept! It's for cat lovers, and it's easy to pass on, so I can fulfill my promise to do so right away without battling Blogger's hyperlink tool.

If you adore your furry friend (even when they spit up hairballs on the carpet rather than the tile no matter how many times you try to teach them) then take the award and display it proudly!

Strange Customs

I've long known that scientists are more superstitious than sailors, but I had to share this tidbit, which had me laughing even in the midst of grant writing purgatory.

Cloning is a molecular biology term, which basically means taking a bit of DNA, a gene we're interested in studying, and pasting it into a handy dandy tool called a plasmid. A plasmid is another piece of DNA, but one that we know all about and can control. We then use the plasmid to put our gene of interest into a new situation and observe what happens. This is how we discover if a gene is cancer causing: We put it in normal cells donated from a piece of skin or wherever and see if too much of the gene causes the normal cells to start behaving like a cancer. That's the just of it anyway.

Cloning is one of the most fundamental techniques, but not the simplest. It was the first thing I learned when working in a lab during my last year of college, and it took me an entire year to get it to work. A year. Despite the fact that 20 years have passed since then and all manner of new methods have been developed, cloning is still a pain. It is as fickle and capricious as the ocean and no amount of scientific exactness and planning can guarantee all goes smoothly. Thus, the elusive and unnamed "Cloning Gods" are often invoked.

In Seattle, towards the end of my PhD, my supervisor gave us all seashell necklaces from Hawaii to aid our cloning efforts. There was always the smile and wink about "magic" and "luck", couching it with "it can't hurt"--we were all logical, educated persons after all--but beneath the joking mask was a touch of real belief. You laugh off the Cloning Gods openly but privately whisper, "I didn't mean it." One of my colleagues even wore an aluminium foil hat during sensitive procedures to cancel out "negative thought waves". All in fun. Yeah. Right.

Today, I witnessed a slightly disturbing never-before-seen ritual among members of the secretive Molecular Biology tribe. Not even National Geographic has previously described these customs, so feel privileged. In the throes of cloning woe, a student and two post-docs oversaw the ritual beheading of Barbie as a sacrifice. There was lots of laughter, but many of us said, "Isn't that going a bit far?" --"My cloning wasn't working," the student replied, as though that explained everything. Yes, my anthropologically-inclined readers, ritual sacrifice did not vanish when the blood-drenched steps of the Aztec pyramids were swallowed by jungle centuries ago; it is alive and well in the sterile halls of academia.

There must be some way of using this in my writing? Perhaps an ancient, Dan Brown-esque, cult operating in a pharmaceutical company? Possible. Possible. I'll make a note and stick it in a file somewhere for later. Oh well, back to work. Thank goodness I have no cloning to do.

I Love Awards, Really

I've received two blog awards in the last couple of weeks from amazingly talented writers (Thank you Michele and Anne!!! ), who also happen to be beautiful people, and I'm not just saying that because they gave me an award. Check out their blogs if you don't believe me, or even if you do--they're worth your time.

But I haven't done my homework. I haven't been visiting new blogs that I can link to and fulfill my award duties. I haven't even been writing for my own blog! Therefore, I will likely be passing these awards on to people who've already won them. I know there are plenty of other wonderful blogs out there that haven't received an award, but I haven't discovered you yet. I'm sorry.



For the Bliss (Happy 101) Award I must list ten things that make me happy:

1. my husband
2. dark chocolate
3. writing
4. the utter relaxation of snorkelling and exploring an underwater world
5. take off in a plane, especially if I'm going someplace new
6. getting lost in a good book, game or DVD boxed set marathon
7. kittens
8. chocolate
9. learning something new
10. did I mention chocolate yet?

Now to pass it along to some cupcake-sweet people:


1. I know you just got this one Tabitha, but you deserve it for your beautiful posts
2. Anne, because I sense you are both a tough cookie and a sweetheart, and I like both!

3. I surmise from the manly blue colour scheme of Alan's blog that he won't be displaying this pink cupcake, but he's getting it anyway

4. Crystal gets this for making punctuation painless

5. I've recently discovered Lynnette's blog, but I'm enjoying her posts and this definitely will go with her colour scheme

6. Stephanie just finished her book. Congrats to her! She's probably feeling blissful right now

7. This one's for M.J. Here's hoping she'll come back soon and post some more

8. Emma for her infectious optimism and energy

9. I wanted Dezmond to get an award so he knows I really do read his posts every day, even though I don't comment (bad me)

10. Elizabeth really is the sweetest

Finally, the second, Silver Lining Award, which I have long coveted and am so grateful to get, goes to...

1. Chasing Empty Pavements
2. From the Desk of a Writer


3. Help! I Need a Publisher!
4. Elana Johnson
   

See? That was fun. I love passing on awards and plugging other people's blogs...I just don't like making hyperlinks (I know I must of messed up some because cntrl-v was on the fritz, so let me know and I'll fix it). Next time I promise to post about an award as soon as I get. I'll be good, I swear. Please don't leave me off of your award lists!

As I was writing this, I discovered Emma Michaels gave me an award (Thank you!!), and as promised I'm passing it along right this second.





1. Southern City Mysteries
2. Let's Try This Again
3. The Lipstick Chronicles
4. Terry's Place
5. Organized Chaos

My editing window freaked out on me a couple of times, and I lost my link to Blogger, but the lists are done and all has ended well. I have three new awards that I'm giddy over, and I hope I made some more blogger's just as pleased as me. Thanks again Michele, Anne and Emma, and congrats everyone!

Now, I really, really need to get back to work (bad me for blogging on a Thursday when I should be doing science)...

Writing is writing...Right?

My already deficient blogging routine is going to take a big hit over the next couple of months as I am forced *shudder* to write a scientific grant to fund my research for the next few years.

These NHMRC (the acronym is boring enough, you don't want to know the full name believe me) grant applications are about 30 pages long. No sweat for a writer, huh? But they aren't plot-driven pages brimming over with fascinating characters and zesty dialogue--they are hypotheses, aims, technical approaches, time lines and materials required. The most exciting thing I can look forward to writing is the 'expected outcomes' section. This is where I say how wonderful my idea is and that it will (somewhere down the line in 10-15 years, maybe 20) contribute to the treatment of cancer (maybe). Never ever be definite in science writing: always couch statements with may, perhaps, possibly, if as predicted...

Other ways in which grant writing is the polar opposite of good writing:

1. use lots of jargon, abbreviations and acronyms

2. avoid all adjectives

3. no 1st or 3rd person--use the royal 'we'

4. do not describe the setting (the readers assume everything will take place in a lab)

5. give away the end at the start--never surprise your reader

6. include pictures and diagrams that you cobbled together in Photoshop

7. this is your one chance to write in future tense (we will extract and compare DNA from the cell lines of interest and this may enable us to determine if there is a difference between immortalised cells using the ALT or Tel mechanism of telomere maintenance...) ASLEEP YET?

8. make up new verbs based on jargon: hybridise, polyadenylate, PCR amplify...

9. couldn't think of anything but I like lists with ten points

10. use passive voice whenever possible (cells will be treated...)

I pray my writing skill recovers quickly from this immersion in a nightmare pool of technobabble. I plan to meet my goal of 500 words per day on my current wip regardless, but I'm not sure my brain will change gears easily. Methinks there will be much editing ahead. Thank goodness I worked on my manuscript over the holidays (I'm at 20,000 words, yay!) and came up with a decent outline to guide me during this difficult time.

Wish me luck!

2009

Summing up the last year seems to be a blogging tradition, so I shall bow to tradition:

I wrote two books in 2009, more than fulfilling my resolution from the previous year.

I hoped to query more agents (only 4 sent out--which were rejected. I decided to retrench before embarrassing myself further), but I altered my plan when I realized I should write more. I think my books are pretty good, but I know they can be better.

I started this blog and met 10 wonderful followers (thank you guys!!) as well as discovered a rich blogosphere that I could access for support and friendship. Probably the BEST discovery of 2009.

My husband finished his Masters degree. I'm so proud of him (off the topic of writing but had to mention it).

I told my boss that I didn't want to run my own lab (it would have left me no time for writing or anything else), which was very scary to admit out loud.

For 2010, I plan to write at least two more books, get good enough to find an agent, and make even more blogging friends.

I hope you fulfilled all your resolutions (at least the ones that mattered) and have a Happy New Year!

What It's All About

I had a difficult time finding my Christmas spirit this year. I'm not sure why. Fear of the uncertain future and the writer's path I've chosen? One more year gone by without starting a family of my own? I'm the most optimistic person I know, so I've patiently waited for this disquiet to pass.

It happened slowly: a Christmas card from the aunt I haven't seen in a decade cheerily talking about her horses as if a day has not gone by that I haven't seen her; a heartfelt Christmas wish sent by text from a friend across town; me wondering if the Christmas gift for my brother on the other side of the world has arrived yet; drawing green holly leaves and red berries on white paper with brilliant markers...Slowly, that warm glow grew in my heart and spread to my head, to my fingers and toes, and now I feel like I'm floating, like all things are possible. Now, I remember what this holiday is all about--love.

May you all know it, whether you celebrate Christmas, Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Frau Holle, or nothing at all! Happy Holidays!