The night before last, just after Mr. Man arrived home from work, I noticed this strange odor in my family room. What sludge had my hubby consumed for lunch, I wondered. Now I’m not the Queen and haven’t had the operation, so I too occasionally let a ripper fly, but this smelled worse than anything I’d ever released or had the misfortune to breathe in. I gave Mr. Man the evil eye and he smirked but protested that it wasn’t him. Like I haven’t heard that before. Well, the kids were playing in the basement, so it wasn’t them, and unless my body had started letting off without my being aware of it, (is that something that happens after you turn 40?)  it certainly wasn’t me. So that left the dog.

That’s right, blame it on the dog. However, this did not smell like Bella’s usual brand. It was toxic enough to make my eyes water. Hmm, could it be that dog chew treat that I’d given her today? Was she experiencing digestive issues? What else could it be?

I chucked the chewy in the trash and the offensive smelling dog outside so that she could convert her gas into a solid. Luckily for her, it was a mild November evening.

When bedtime rolled around, I let Bella back inside but she brought the stink in with her. Man, this was potent gas! Concerned that she had tummy troubles, I had her lie down and roll over and I gave her belly a rub.

Well, I nearly died! The smell almost knocked me out. And now it was on my hands. “That smells like skunk,” Mr. Man said, ever helpful.

So I chucked her outside again, jumped on the internet to find out how to get rid of skunk smell. What fun! 11:30 at night, we bathed the poor dog in a potion of Hydrogen Peroxide, baking soda and dishwashing liquid and then hosed her off. I toweled her dry as best I could then put her in the laundry room where it’s cozy and warm.

But in the morning the smell lingered. The poor dog couldn’t stand her own fragrance so when I let her outside, she rolled in dog poop. Feces-on-the-neck beats Eau de Skunk according to golden retrievers. So for a second bath, this time with another remedy gleaned from the internet.  Apparently, Listerine battles skunk breath as well as gingivitis. Now the house and Bella smell minty fresh with only a slight skunkish undertone. Methinks another bath is on the cards for us today.

Hopefully, Bella has learned her lesson and will skirt away from skunks from now on.

But as you know, every cloud has a silver lining. My writing exercise this week involves tackling a Fibonacci poem. I got the idea from Writer’s Digest magazine and thought it would be fun to try. I found the skunk debacle most inspiring, so here’s my 6 line fib. Enjoy, its skunkalicious!

Skunk

Spray

Pee-ew!

Poor Bella

Stinking up the house

Listerine bath fixed her fragrance




Adorable little stinkers! 

ANGRY MANAGEMENT by Chris Crutcher

Welcome to Mr. Nak’s Angry Management group where you’ll meet big Angus, disfigured Sarah, Montana the cheerleader gone goth, Matt Miller the WWJD and Marcus James the school’s token kid. Come and join the misfits, the victims, the heroes. You’ll fit right in.

Chris Crutcher’s Angry Management is raw, intense and powerful. The stories grab you by the heart and the throat and shake you like a rag doll. Crutcher wrenches and uplifts you as insecurity, anger, hate and prejudice carry you away alongside love, freedom, power and hope.

After I finished reading it, I dabbed my eyes, blew my nose and remembered to breathe again.
 

“If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.” - John Steinbeck

"Forgiveness is the fragrance the Violet leaves on the heel that has crushed it."
 - Mark Twain

How green is my garden?

Frog green

Cicada green

Rosemary green

Coleus green

Creeping jenny green

Ivy green (poison and English)

Hummingbird green

Are you green with envy?

 

Now you may be wondering about the frog-green seeing as not all gardens have frogs. Ours certainly didn’t but then my husband decided that our back garden needed a pond. His sales pitch for the pond revolved more around our turtle Toby and how it would be nice for Toby to spring, summer and fall outdoors rather than in the gigantic tank on our kitchen bay windowsill. And so the project began and funnily enough, evolved into a two-tiered water feature, with fountain, paved patio, fish and a frog.

How the frog came to be in the pond is something of a mystery. My husband had only just finished digging the hole for the pond liners and put them into position, filling them with water to see how they’d lie. Then we had two weekends of rain and no further work done on the pond project. When he went to lay pavers and frame out the small patio, he discovered our guest. So how does a frog just happen by? Was Frog hopping through our garden on his way to visit Rat and Badger in the woods two houses down and across the road when he saw the oasis under construction and decided to move in?

I don’t know the how of it all, but I like having him around. He’s kinda cute in a slimy green way and the kids have named him Frogger. Our golden, Bella, either hasn’t noticed Frogger, or hasn’t considered chasing him like she does the rabbits, chipmunks and squirrels. She has, however, been reprimanded quite sharply for mistaking Toby’s Water Park (under construction) for Bella’s Swim Club.

It will be interesting to see if Toby and Frogger will be fast friends. The pond needs a couple more weekend’s of work before it’ll be ready. I’ll let you know how the introductions go.



Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
 

According to the dictionary, a vacation is defined as: “leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure.”

According to some other folk, a vacation is:

“what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking.” -- Earl Wilson

“having nothing to do and all day to do it in.” -- Robert Orben

According to me, a summer vacation involves sleeping late, reading books, relaxing on the beach, listening to the ocean, playing tennis, flying kites, throwing schedules and chores out the window, laughing and horsing around with the kids, and sighing with contentment.

Our Bethany vacation certainly lived up to all the definitions above.

Of course, no matter how marvelous the vacation, there is no feeling quite like coming home.

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” -- Nelson Mandela

And like James Brown, “I feel good.”

The revisions to my picture book project are far from complete but I believe the manuscript needs to rest and rise before I can significantly improve on what I have. I'm pleased with the progress I've made over the last couple of weeks but the little man (my muse)  needs to go off and find the file on how to solve some of the remaining issues.

So now I'm about to tackle the revision process for my MG fantasy adventure. Ack! I'm standing at the base of the Drakensberg mountains and I'm not sure how to get to the top. Step by step right? Choose a path and get hiking.
 

The step by step thing made me think about Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life and so, rather than start on my revisions, I decided to read the chapter on plot.

Anne writes: “Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know and are getting to know better day by day, something is bound to happen.”

Lamott says that we need to find out what our characters care the most about because then we'll realize what's at stake. Something must be at stake for there to be tension. Without tension the reader will not turn the page. "Think of a hockey player- there had better be a puck out there on the ice, or he is going to look pretty ridiculous.”

Because I am such a fan of lists, I am going to list what is at stake for all of my characters, minor ones too. This will give me (and the little man) something to think about as I read through my draft and make the easy changes. This will be my analysis, list and sticky note phase of revisions. Before I can get the revisions started, I need to find out where I stand.

THINGS I NEED TO FIX

1.                  CHARACTERIZATION:

-          give the reader reasons to care about the main character

-          make MC memorable

-          give MC flaws so that he can grow

-          Cynthia Lord gives her character’s three traits that she doesn’t admire so that she can hurt them

2.                  VOICE

-          use voice and word choice to make MC memorable

-          voice should be engaging, arouse emotion, reveal MC (or his emotional mood) and match the intended audience

3.                  PLOT

-          episodic – create smoother transitions to link and develop these “episodes” so that the story flows and isn’t so anecdotal

4.                  PACE

-          there is no build just one event after another

5.                  CONFLICT

-          things going wrong for mc but no character growth because he has no flaws
 

 THE 1-2-3 OF HOW I LEARNT WHAT NEEDED TO BE FIXED:   (because I like to give credit where credit is due)
 

NESCBWI “Many Voices” 2009 Conference

1.         Manuscript critique by Mark McVeigh
2.         Keynote address: Cynthia Lord

3.         Picture book workshop by Toni Buzzeo and Jen Ward

I have my work cut out for me, don’t I?  At least I have a plan.

Notebook in hand, I took to the woods. I shouldered my way between trees, scraped my forearm and elbow against bark and crashed into tree trunks. I listened to the leaves, the ferns, the river and the wind. I walked on tree roots, packed earth, soggy moss and off path. I tripped over branches, small rocks and clumps of grass. I felt the sun on my face, the perspiration in my hair beneath my hat, the hot breeze on my arms and the dryness in my mouth.

Later, I sat on a huge cool rock above the river, shooed away the ants, checked for snakes, then let my pen scratch across the paper. And so another chapter began.

I’m on writers’ retreat in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire.

I began the day (after breakfast, ablutions and giving some thought to where my boys were at that moment and what they might be doing) with making a To Do list. It seemed smart to start with an idea of what I’d like to accomplish for the day. You know, give myself some direction. The list done, I dove right in.

I summarized my notes from the conference workshops I had attended over the weekend and made lists of how I could apply the techniques and tools I’d learned to my various projects. I then tackled my WIP. One of my goals this week is to get the darn thing finished. First draft that is. Just five chapters to go. I think. Sometimes it heads off in directions I hadn’t envisioned and hey, just like that, I end up adding a couple more chapters to my outline. I wrote for about two hours, even though I REALLY didn’t feel like it and broke for lunch with Kelly kellyrfineman  and Jennwriterjenn

After lunch, to get rid of that I-so-NEED-a-nap feeling, I went for a walk. I brought my camera along and took photos. In my WIP a lot happens in the forest, so I took a lot of photos of trees and other woodsy stuff. I kept Cynthia Lord’s tip in mind and looked for the surprising details and engaged all five senses. I hugged trees, stroked rocks, sniffed some weirdly blue gooey tree sap, listened to the voices of the stream, the birds, the wind, and photographed lichen, bark, cones, tree trunks, ferns, branches and anything else that I could use to help establish setting in my WIP. That left taste. Hmm. I thought about it, but chickened out. I wasn’t going to taste the soil, the leaves, the ants (they’re peppery, you know. I ate a couple when I was a kid.) Yes, I'm yella.

With my arsenal of surprising sensory detail I tackled the afternoon writing session and was pleased as punch to finish up the late afternoon and two of the five chapters.

I enjoyed dinner with my fellow retreaters and then knocked out another session working on the rest of my To Do list. By 8:30 I was able to check off everything for Day 1 (and choirs sang) and settled down to watch Sense and Sensibility before catching some z’s.

By all accounts, a great first day.

Dear Ms. Manzella,

Enclosed please find a check in the amount of one hundred dollars that I would like to donate towards the Burlington County Book Mobile.

                        Sincerely,

                        Angela De Groot

How surprised was I to receive the following response, posted to my blog, seeing as I hadn't even mentioned the library-loving challenge?

"A long time ago, when we were still young, Els got a birthday card, showing a nice coupe car perched on the top of a hill, its nose pointing down the slope. The caption said it all: "40, and ready to roll!".

I don't know whether the weather in New Jersey's early spring is suitable for a ride in an open convertible, but it is a nice thought of having the sun on your face and the wind in your hair and just rolling into the next phase of life.

Happy birthday with a hug and love for you all,  Papa and Opa."

I'm ready to Rock and Roll into the next phase of my life. I haven't been this excited since my 21st birthday.