A couple more baby photos up:
Pasketti
Pretty Green Dress

There are more in the “Pasketti” and “Pretty Green Dress” galleries in private space for those who have access. I’ve also added a couple of “just messing around” kinds of shots to my own gallery:
Afternoon Kitchen (messing with light)
Pendant Sun (messing with color)

This week was a good example of reason #2 why I need to schedule creative development time if I’m going to make any progress. Reason #1 is that I’ll never get to it if I don’t say, “OK, I’m going to do this at X time.” Reason #2 is that some weeks I don’t feel that much like writing. Which, OK, maybe I should just skip it if I don’t feel like it, right? Well… But the thing is, that doesn’t help me grow as a writer. I’ve got to keep exercising those mental muscles if I expect to get anywhere. When you’re specifically trying to develop a skill, you can’t just skip practice sessions. It’s maybe more obvious with physical skills (fencing, fighting, chases, escapes), but it’s just as true for nonphysical skills (writing, critical thinking, programming, advanced math).

And I didn’t feel particularly like writing. But I did it anyway; I told myself that I had this time scheduled, so I needed to follow through. (Since no one else was in the house, I did settle for going back into the back room and just sort of blocking the rest of the house out of my mind until I was done.) If nothing else, I had to at least try. I had to at least sit there with my notebook and my computer and try to do something.

It worked. I finally decided to try working on another exercise from Writing Fiction Step-by-Step, this time not bothering to try to write “me” but just writing something, about anyone at all, just to get something written. The scenario was a visit to a family. I started out with the protagonist being greeted at the door by the mother of the family (a sister? sister-in-law?) and just let it go from there. One thing led to another, and eventually what I had was the story of a six-year-old’s family birthday party. The birthday girl is going through a “phase” in which she sees strange things, which her older brother appears to be encouraging despite his parents’ pleas to stop it. The parents’ theory is that “seeing things” is the girl’s way of dealing with her mother’s terminal illness. (The idea behind the story is that it’s not, she really is seeing them and so is her brother, and the visitor sees them too, or maybe did see such things when he was younger.) Not a lot of details, but enough of a setup to go somewhere with.

I didn’t get that much of it written, though, unfortunately. I… er… I fell asleep. Or came so close to it that I decided to put the writing away and take a nap, anyway. Still, I feel like it was a productive session and I got something out of it. Maybe not as much as I would have liked, but something.

This week: Photography at the big family reunion on my Mom’s side, which takes place at a small parochial school attached to a beautiful old church. Look for a gallery of samples early next week.

We finally watched The Seeker: The Dark is Rising last night. I have to admit, my expectations were pretty much that it would suck majorly. It says something when they have to use the title of the novel as a subtitle for the movie, I think. The movie surpassed all my expectations of suckiness, in all the wrong ways.

Did you know:

• The Stanton family is from America, though they’ve just moved to England. Mr. Stanton is a physics teacher who, around the time of Will’s birth, was working on a thesis about Light and Dark.
• The long-dead elder brother (Tom) Will didn’t know about? Actually his twin. And missing, not dead. Oh, and he only has one sister, by the way. Whose name is… Gwen?
• Merriman Lyon needs lessons in discretion from the Lady, apparently.
• Will’s just an average teenage boy. He gets frustrated easily, uses his newfound power frivilously all the time, and has no particular “older than his age” insights.
• There appear to only be five Old Ones, including Will. (Merriman, the Lady, Dawson, and I think Smith are the other four.)
• The Signs are the power of the Light, divided up. (Which makes me hopeful that they’ll stop this insanity here and not try to film the rest of the books, as they’ve effectively ignored the other artifacts of power — the Harp of Gold, the Crystal Sword, and of course the Grail — but you never know.)
• Speaking of the Signs, there are only five made from conventional materials. The sixth is a human soul, freely given. The Old Ones have no idea whatsoever where any of them might possibly be.
• The Book (of Gramarye, one presumes, though it seems much more limited than that here) can only be read by the Seeker.

I could go on. I won’t bore you. Suffice to say, the movie bears so little resemblance to the book that if it weren’t for the names I might not recognize it. It’s also apparently not very good even as a movie separate from the books; Tim, who’s only read the first chapter of The Dark is Rising, said he found it really hard to follow. And here I thought I was just confused because I was expecting some resemblance to the book.

I’m a sucker for lists. I admit it. I don’t know why. Perhaps there’s some latent OCD somewhere in my mental configuration that likes to have things lined up and ordered neatly. Perhaps I just like arguing with them. Either way, when a “Top 10 Fill-In-The-Blank” list appears in my morning Web sweep, I tend to click through… and then probably click through to yet another list that’s linked to from it.

Today’s list is not a “Top” list, just a list: EW’s 20 Fall Movies We Can’t Wait To See. While many of these don’t pique my interest much, or at least don’t stand out and scream, “SEE ME!“, a handful of them caught my eye. Thought I’d share. Most of these I’ll probably wait for DVDs on, but still.

Changeling. Premieres October 24. In Prohibition-era Los Angeles, a nine-year-old boy disappears. Months later, he mysteriously returns. His mother, though, suspects that the child who is returned to her is not actually her son. (Apparently based on a true story, but I thought it was interesting before learning that.)

Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Premieres October 31. OK, I admit it’s Kevin Smith that’s drawing me to this; otherwise, I’d just roll my eyes and dump it in my mental trash bin of movies that are perfect examples of how dumb America seems to like its films these days. But Kevin Smith does have a history of making good things out of dumb-sounding ideas, and so I am curious about it. A little.

Rachel Getting Married. Premieres in October. Anne Hathaway as… the wild child? This I want to see. The trailer only reinforces that. It looks interesting. It’s a concept that could easily have gone comedy or romantic comedy, but it looks like they’re shooting for drama. Cool.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. December 25. EW describes it as a “bittersweet fantasy about a man who ages in reverse from 80 back down to infancy”. Which could be either really good, or really bad; coming from the director of Fight Club and Se7en, I’m hopeful. (Bits of trivia: he also directed some really nice videos, like Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Bad Girl” (starring Christopher Walken as an angel of death, mmmmm) and George Michael’s “Freedom”. And Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted”. Heeheeheehee. And he’s the director announced for 2009’s Rendezvous With Rama! Anyway.)

OK, yes, yes, and Twilight. December 12. I do want to see it, but I’m becoming nervous about it. Still trying to get my head around this. There are so many things wrong with that one sentence, and most of them could screw up the whole thing. I am now considering this: What if so much of the second trailer released is from the last quarter of the book because most of the movie is too rather than because Hollywood is doing dumb things with trailers? I’ve decided to set my expectations low (I’m just hoping for a better adaptation than The Golden Compass) and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

A frittata is something like a cross between an omelette and a quiche; it starts on the stove in a skillet like an omelette and is crustless like an omelette, but finishes in the oven and has fillings distributed throughout the egg like a quiche. It’s an excellent way to put to good use the bounty we’re getting from the CSA right now. Plus, it travels reasonably well, so it makes for a good breakfast (or lunch) at work. This “recipe”, less a recipe than a method, came to me from Eyebrows.

How much to use? This time I did one big tomato, half a medium onion, half a small zucchini, and about half of a small eggplant. The herb I used was, I estimate, about 1/3 cup chopped Thai basil. (Which might have been a bit much, even; basil is pretty strong.) As for eggs, I think the rule is one per person plus one for the pan. I usually use 5 and make 4 servings out of it.

You can put meat in this if you want, but I’ve never bothered. The eggs have plenty of protein in them, and most breakfasty meats are just going to add fat and salt that you don’t need.

Frittata

2 Tbsp vegetable oil
garlic
vegetables, diced
eggs
2 oz shredded cheese of your choice
2 Tbsp grated Parmesan
fresh herb

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Heat oil in a medium, oven-safe skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and veg; sautee for a couple of minutes. While that’s sauteeing, beat eggs, both cheeses, and herb together in a bowl until the mixture is relatively smooth.

When the vegetables are done, add the egg mixture to the pan and cook for 1 minute. Transfer pan to preheated oven and bake for 10-15 minutes until the eggs are cooked through. (The more vegetables you use, the longer you’ll need to bake it.)

You may or may not have heard of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. You probably have heard the famous opening to his 1830 novel Paul Clifford, “It was a dark and stormy night.” (It’s been used by many other people since, but I’m told that Bulwer-Lytton is the original source.) You probably haven’t heard the thing in its full glory:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

In honor of this astounding achievement of literary hot-mess, a contest is held each year in which entrants vie for the honor of having their opening sentence (to an imaginary, non-existant novel) declared the worst of the year. This year’s results have been announced:

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2008 Results

Aside from the grand prize winner, there are several also very entertaining winning entries in subcategories. I’m particularly fond of the Romance winner, the Spy Fiction runner-up, and the Grand Panjandrum’s Special Award under Vile Puns. But they’re all good. Or, well, you know what I mean.

I had my second session of creative development on Saturday. I even managed to keep it just exactly when it had been scheduled and doing just exactly what I’d thought I would be doing. I went to the library, and worked on writing.

I think there’s going to be a small settling-in time while I figure out exactly how to structure what I’m doing in the alotted timeframe. While looking for a book to fill in the gap while I waited to get my hands on Breaking Dawn, I ran across a book of writing exercises given to me by Sarah Kathryn years ago. (Approximately 9 years ago; the letter she sent with it is dated May 1999.) I thought, maybe I should work through some of this too. It will help me develop certain skills that I’ve been not working very hard on.

So I did. For the first hour, I worked on outlining the big prison break scene, with moderate success. I’ll admit to wasting a little time transcribing notes to consolidate them, too. Then in the second hour, I read the first chapter of the writing book and went to start on the exercises.

I didn’t do as well as I would have liked. I tried two different starts to the first one, and neither pleased me. Actually, I hated them both. I was trying to write from my own experience, which I think was the point of that particular exercise, trying to write me. I do all right, I think, at blogging me. I don’t always do as well writing stories about me. I’m wondering if it would be as effective to do the exercise (perhaps even all the exercises) focused on characters from ongoing projects or something. Or at least someone who isn’t even a fictionalized version of me. I think the whole “me” thing is really holding me back here.

Next week should rightfully have been a photography week, but I have a family reunion the week after which I’m going to use as photography time too, so I think I’ll write this coming Saturday. It’s grandparent night and Tim will be leaving early in the day, so I’ll have the house to myself. I think I’ll still go to the library, or maybe a park if the weather’s nice, to write because part of the point is to get out of the house.

Stroke your skin, there are teeth marks to be sure.
Maybe we’re best close to the ground.
Maybe angels drag us down.
I wonder which part of this will leave the scar.

…No matter what they say, you’ll always be
faithfully dangerous, lost and lovely,
so beautiful to me.

–Over the Rhine, “Faithfully Dangerous”

(Apologies for the creative trimming; one of those cases where a few lines jumped out at me while I was driving, and the whole thing turned out not to be as relevant. Full lyrics here.)

Last week at weigh-in, the scale said 180. According to it, I had reached my goal weight. I didn’t trust it, though, because I’d been sick the day before. I surely hadn’t lost the last 2-3 pounds all in one week. Surely it was just a temporary dip due to the food poisoning.

Fast-forward to this morning, this week’s weigh-in. The scale says… *drumroll* 180. It’s for real. I’ve done it. I’ve not only lost the baby weight, I’ve gone back down to the weight I wanted to be at, but had been slipping away from, at the time I got pregnant.

I should be ecstatic, but to tell you the truth I’m still a little bit in shock. It sort of crept up on me; I hadn’t expected it to happen for another few weeks yet.

I have the best husband ever. I was maybe having a tiny meltdown Saturday night because it was looking like I wasn’t going to be able to get my creative development time in, and despite the fact that I was making him feel bad about it (which I felt bad about then, and still do; it wasn’t my intent to blame anyone but maybe myself) he bravely stepped in, ordered me to go write, and proceeded to do the dishes and several other chores from my to-do list. And then when I emerged an hour later, threatened to throw me back into the back room where I’d been working and lock the door if I was coming out because I felt like I should and not because I was done.

I love you, honey.

So that was how I got my writing session in for this week. It wasn’t what I’d originally had in mind, being as I didn’t leave the house and only spent an hour on it, but it worked very nicely. I was able to get quite a lot of the first act of my practice novel outlined, actually. If I can continue this on a weekly basis, even taking every third out for photography, the novel should develop fairly quickly. (It’s the actual writing of it that will take forever, of course.) After it was over, I also felt really pretty relaxed. I’d accomplished something that was just for me, not for keeping the house running or for taking care of anyone else or even for losing weight and whatever, but something that I was doing just because I wanted to. It felt good.

The process of outlining this also is already giving me some insight into the whole problem of actually writing the Alex project. I think the thing there is, it’s too big. There’s too much of it. Or at least, so I suspect. I guess I’ll have to see how long this practice thing comes out to be (I really need a better name than “the practice novel”; I’m not good with titles) and that will give me a better idea. Right now, though, what I’m outlining is far, far more simplistic than that behemoth, and it feels like a good scope for a book, it feels doable. I suppose I could just make the damned thing a series, but I’m reluctant to do that when I can’t even get one book’s worth structured and written yet.