If you haven’t had enough of me whining about hormones and water retention yet, you can go read some more of it over on my SparkBlog:
Like Water

At least I’m actually working on a solution to the problem this time and not just bitching.

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I was thinking about going through and tagging all my blog entries. Mostly because I think tag clouds are nifty.

Then I actually looked at my post archive. I started blogging in May 2002, and it’s pretty much all still hanging around. There are 88 pages of posts now.

I dunno about this, y’all. Maybe I’ll have to make do with tagging from here on out and forget about the archives? Of course, I was also going to do some reorganization of categories, which is badly needed… Yick.

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Well, sort of. Maybe not running; maybe just walking briskly. At some pace better than a complete halt, anyway.

I’m starting to get my ideas together for this year’s NaNoWriMo because, as I’ve said before and will say again, I’m completely out of my mind. I’m starting early to give myself a chance to get a good outline in place to work from. I think that was one thing that really helped me last year, and I want to try to do at least that well again. I’d really like to actually get to the end of the novel by the end of November this time, and not just hit 50K with 30K+ yet to go. (Although I don’t think finishing the whole thing in six months is all that bad, certainly.)

I won’t be writing Word #1 until November 1, but given that I’ve already started development work on it, I’m considering it an official work-in-progress. As such, I’ve added a page for it, linked to from the sidebar.

Nia With a Reverse Ring

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Over on the reading blog, I’m just starting to get into The Mysteries of Udolpho, because when it pops up on LibriVox‘s new items feed just as I’m finishing Northanger Abbey (in which Udolpho is much-referenced), how can I resist?

The Beginning of the Mysteries

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It’s Time for a New Relationship With Food

Have you ever stopped to consider what relationship you have with food?

We don’t often think we even have a relationship with food, and yet we do — and it’s pretty intimate.

Think about this: if you’re like me, you spend as much or more time with food than you do with many of the loved ones in your life — several hours a day or more.

And consider this: technically, food is just fuel for living. That’s all — nothing else.

Technically, yes, food is just fuel. And technically, a house is just shelter; sex is just procreation; a bath is just a way to get clean; words are just a means of communication. But there is so much more to all of those things, just as there is more to food than supplying the chemical energy and nutrients that our bodies physically require. I cannot express to you how much the thought of food as just fuel, nothing more, depresses me. It’s that kind of attitude that brings dieting down to the “die, with a T” level for me. If there is no enjoyment to be found in food, then why bother with it? Why bother seeking out great ingredients? Why bother trying new cuisines or flavor profiles? Hell, I might just as well subsist on some sort of synthetic nutrient-rich sludge. Who needs fresh homegrown tomatoes? It’s all the same, all just fuel.

Which is not to say that I don’t think the author’s got a point, in general terms. I think that many people (self included, at least at times) do need to change their relationship with food. We do need to make sure that it isn’t our default form of comfort, that all our socialization doesn’t depend upon the presence of food, that we don’t eat just to pass the time, that it is not our sole motivation or means of rewarding ourselves. Food — like a home, like sex, like a good hot bath, like a well-written story — fills a portion of our emotional needs, and that’s fine. What we need to do is ensure that we don’t depend on it for all (or even most) of those needs, and that we don’t overconsume because we perceive that we “need” to emotionally.

In other words: Moderation in all things. And moderation does not equate to a complete lack, not even where seeing food through an emotional lens is concerned. Moderation means being reasonable and responsible about it. I think actually it’s a good thing to become emotionally involved with your food to some degree. It’s a good thing to care about what you put in your mouth, to be aware of where it comes from and what went into its journey from there to your plate and appreciate the efforts of everyone and everything involved. It’s a good thing to savor a dish brilliantly conceived and executed, to be inspired by the things other people have done with food. I absolutely think that it’s a good thing to think of food as more than just fuel.

That is the relationship I think we need to strive to have with our food: One of respect and admiration. Not a codependent relationship, not a cold and distant one. Food should be our friend. We should be mindful, not neglectful or repressive. Appreciative, not addicted.

Let’s change our relationship with food, yes. But let’s not go too far the other direction with it.

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With one novel done, it’s time to start thinking about the next one: NaNo 2009. Those who haven’t tuned out my droning on about NaNo 2008 may remember that I began with a handful of random elements. The tools I used to generate these random elements can be found in NaNoFiMo’s resources section, under “other randomizers”. There are five tools there, spread across four sheets: Character traits, occupations, settings, and two different plot element generators (one more specific than the other).

Here’s how it works: There are 100 items. You’ll need some way to generate a random number between 1 and 100 (or 0 and 99, if you prefer, using 0 as 100). If you’re not a gamer and thus don’t have the appropriate combination of dice lying around, “Plots, page 1” (warning: PDF) includes a grid which can be used to generate your random number. Or you can do what I do and use an online dice roller, such as Konkret. When you have your random number, simply find it in the list and use the corresponding element.

Which is a great theory, but I got frustrated very quickly this time around when I tried to generate random elements. These sheets are not particularly geared toward my writing preferences. I write fantasy, pretty much, and generally the kind of fantasy that involves castles and people running around on horseback with swords and such. Half the settings sheet is composed of places like New York and Paris and the Sahara Desert that assume my setting is on Earth; the plot elements sheet has similar problems, suggesting Nazis and the internet. All of the sheets also contain a fairly decent amount of absurdity here and there (a mishap with a bendy straw), which will work for some projects but is not what I’m personally looking for, and sci-fi (see: aliens, Internet) and pop culture references (such as a Matrix quote) are sprinkled throughout. Finally, some of the longer plot elements strike me as just plain bad. For example: “Include a soapbox moment about a subject you feel strongly about that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot.” No! I will not! You can’t make me!

Well. If the sheets are not to my liking, obviously I must change them. I tried to make them more generic, so that they would work for me but also wouldn’t be so fantasy-centered that someone else couldn’t also use them for another genre. I think there’s still a bias in the direction of fantasy, but hopefully it’s not too bad. I thought I’d offer them here, in case anyone was interested:
Character Traits
Occupations
Settings
Short Plot Elements
Long Plot Elements

Use them as described for the original sheets above; generate as many elements as you feel you need to get something going. This time around I’m trying three character traits, an occupation, three settings, and five short plot elements. A few notes:

• The first four work pretty well for setting up a story, but the Long Plot Elements list is really more for getting un-stuck when you run up against a case of writer’s block. You can use it for setup too, but there are references to the last character who spoke, what to do with the next chapter, etc. that may make that difficult.
• There are still some technological references in there, the expectation being that they will fit into urban fantasy etc.
• All five sheets are peppered with “adult content” in varying degrees, but it’s not dominant, so a few extra rolls should get you something more suitable if you’re trying to write family-friendly.
• Some of the short plot elements look an awful lot like settings. Those aren’t my ideas, they were actually on the original sheet that way. I think the point there is to have the castle or closet or whatever it happens to be drive a portion of the plot rather than just be the place where the plot happens. If that makes sense.
• If you don’t like the first set you get… Cheat. Goodness knows I did. It’s a way to get a story started, not a competition. You don’t have to play by the rules. Have another go if you need to. Just don’t forget to stop generating elements and start planning story at some point.

Enjoy!

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Over at SparkPeople, I’m realizing it’s time to buckle down again:
Consequences

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This time it’s Discworld, which is always a good thing:
Night Watch

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Two new entries in other places today. First, I review my latest dance cardio exercise DVD over at SparkPeople:
Exercise Videos: Prevention: Dance It Off!

Then I start to try to catch up on my reading blog with an entry about Northanger Abbey, which I finished just before vacation:
Northanger Abbey

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(This is the short version. No, really, I swear. If you want the entire 8K-plus-word vacation log with all the nice details and whatever, you can find it here.)

This year, it was just Tim and me, off to the Outer Banks yet again. We left Natalie with my parents and headed out on our own. It’s been really nice, in past years, to have this family experience with the area, to be in a place we love with the people we love — but at the same time, this year it was really nice to be just the two of us. No one to show around; we could skip whatever we felt like skipping, or revisit whatever we felt like revisiting, without worrying about how it might affect someone else’s experience. We could do things on the spur of the moment without consulting with anyone but each other. And of course it was just nice to be there, alone, together.

The Drury Inn Greensboro may have been win, but the roads around Greensboro were fail. We had trouble finding our hotel Saturday night because they’d redone a portion of the road and in the process removed the exit that previously had led to the hotel. The GPS was unaware of this. When we left Sunday morning, we had trouble again because part of I-40 was closed. In and of itself, this was only mildly annoying, but the detour route was not at all clearly marked, and we probably wasted between fifteen minutes and half an hour just trying to get back on course.

We spent much of our time at Bodie Island Lighthouse trying to find photos to take that one or both of us hadn’t already taken ten bazillion times. This is my seventh trip to the Outer Banks and Tim’s fourth, and there are some attractions (Bodie included) that we’ve seen every time. Avoiding duplication becomes challenging.

The one thing I’d gone to the Elizabethan Gardens with the specific intention of photographing, outside of the Hornbeam Walk, was the Sunken Garden — more precisely, the four statues in its quadrants, representing four Roman gods. I always mean to photograph them and then realize too late that I’ve forgotten. I’m not entirely happy with the shots I got, but I’m not certain what else to do either. (I’ve always wanted to do one of the Apollo statue with the sun overhead, but the sun has risen too far by the time the gardens open and won’t fit in the frame. I’d have to be here at a different time of year, I suspect.) Perhaps by the next time we come I’ll have thought up something else.

And then I did it. I finally climbed Currituck Lighthouse. I did have a little bit of vertigo at the top and tried to stay as close to the building as possible. I wasn’t so much afraid of falling myself, I think, as I was afraid of dropping something. Probably an expensive, fragile something like, say, the EOS 10D or my iPhone.

After checking out Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, we moved on to its old site. Erosion of the shoreline forced the lighthouse to be relocated in 1999-2000, traveling 2,870 feet inland. The former site is now marked by a ring of stones bearing the names of the lighthouse keepers at Hatteras between 1803 and 1939. It is situated on a beach now used as public ocean access, complete with lifeguard. The beach itself teems with activity — scuba diving, surfing, bodyboarding, children and adults alike frolicking in the waves — while the memorial sits off to one side, slowly being swallowed by the shifting dunes, apparently forgotten by the majority of those who flock to see the lighthouse in its current location. The project of the move itself is mentioned often at the new site, but few seem to care about the old site anymore. The lighthouse is here now, not there; what does it signify? It’s a little bit sad, and the ring of stones on the beach seemed almost forlorn as I paced slowly around it, reading what names were not already buried in sand. And yet this is the way it goes. Great things happen, and time moves on, and the former state of things is forgotten as history swallows it up. That was then, this is now, and as interesting as “then” might have been, it’s not always possible or necessary to preserve the physical fact of it. At least the memory and the story live on, even if the site is slowly disappearing.

It was on the nature trail at Fort Raleighдивани that I really started to think that Nature could not, in fact, be made into a supermodel. She doesn’t take direction very well. The squirrels in particular are really blatant about setting up a perfect shot and then ruining it just as you get the camera in position. The breeze also likes to tease with good flag-billowing shots that don’t stay long enough to be captured.

Later that night, we walked out on the Hatteras Island Fishing Pier. In the darkness of the night, lit by the pier lights, the ocean surging beneath me and moonlight trailing over it into the distance, the wind in my face, somehow I felt at peace. It was a little bit of an odd, unexpected feeling. Although I love this area and I love the beach, the ocean and I have been on rather shaky terms since the 2006 trip; my connection is not so much to the moon at the moment as to her brother the sun; wind has never been my thing; and to top it all off, the pier itself moved slightly with the wind and the surf, which normally makes me a bit nervous. And yet it all combined to form that perfect moment. It’s funny how things happen sometimes.

I suppose I should have considered blogging “work”, but– Do you know, I just don’t. I was on vacation, I was vacation blogging, I was writing for the sheer sake of writing, and I was having fun with it.

And then we bought six cases of beer. Well, OK, four of beer and two of root beer. And some house-made salami and pepperoni. Um. But it wasn’t all for us! Really! The brewery kindly let us use their hand truck to cart the cases out to our car. Apparently, this is not unusual.

Just as we were entering the “open ocean” exhibit at the Aquarium in Manteo, a large tank with a replica shipwreck in it featuring large fish and sharks, we discovered that the aquarium was not quite as sparsely populated as we’d hoped. There, a tidal wave of late-elementary or possibly middle-school-aged children washed over us, trailed by a handful of rather apathetic adults wearing neon-yellow CHAPERON stickers. The kids rushed around, pushing past and screaming their excitement about the sharks in particular with little regard for anyone else. The chaperons seemed not to notice or care; they simply trudged along in the wake of their charges. In their own way, they were just as bad, standing listlessly in the direct path of traffic with no apparent comprehension of the idea that other patrons might want to pass by.

There is a point in every vacation where you don’t know whether to wish it would continue longer or that you were back home. Saturday morning was that point. I didn’t particularly want to leave the islands. I loved the sound of the waves just a few hundred feet away. I longed to experience more of the local seafood, fresh-caught the same day it was cooked. I wanted to forget about life for just a little while more. And yet… And yet, Friday night I’d dreamt of Natalie, of first seeing her when we got back. Dad had told us that she seemed to really be missing us, and I felt bad about that and missed her right back. I missed her, I missed my parents, I missed having our cats curled up around us as we fell asleep at night. I missed all the comforts of being not just in a home, but in our own home. I wanted to stay, and I wanted to be back.

Public Photos: Outer Banks 2009
Private Photos: Outer Banks 2009

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