Uh-oh!

Any day that begins with a broken coffee machine has got disaster written all over it.

Fortunately yesterday's work on Chrissie went pretty well. Because even though the sun is shining, there's not a cloud, it's a beautiful bright island day, I somehow sense gloom and foreboding. I don't know about any other writers out there, but this one is caffeine powered.

Update: Just minutes after posting this, I started hearing a big truck engine outside. This is a one-way street, and very narrow, maybe half the width of a normal residential street in the states. The rumbling persisted, so I finally went out to look. WAPA is replacing all the power poles on the street. I suppose that's a good thing, but what a mess this day is going to be.

See? I told you.

Someone a Lot Smarter Than Me (18)

You can't fix a blank page -- Nora Roberts

That's way more eloquent than I usually say it, but it means the same thing. Don't sit there kvetching. Write something down. Write something great. Write something crappy. But write it down. You can fix it later. But as Ms. Roberts reminds us, you can't fix it you haven't written it.

For my own update, I've been buried all week in the latest revision notes from Eddie the Agent. He thinks it'll probably be the last, and then it's ready to start showing. The work is going very well. And then this happened.

Tori is off island, chaperoning the high school seniors on their senior trip, a cruise to Barbados. (Yeah, tell me about it.) Well, I don't sleep well when Tori's gone, never have, never will. So I was laying in bed trying to get some sleep because I had a meeting to cover this morning. And suddenly I was sitting bolt upright - literally. I had one of those blinding stabs when I realized what I need to do. It had to do with the number of trips into town when the boat is docked at Nevis. Since the day I wrote this section two years ago it's always been two trips into town and the various adventures that befall them, including a run in with pirates.

Last night I suddenly realized how stupid that was. Or, to be completely honest, I realized how stupid I am.

There's no reason - no reason at all - it can't happen in one trip. I just have to reorganize a couple of things, and then it becomes a much more exciting event. Really picks up the pace. So I've been waiting all day to finish with this news story so I can get to work. I'm now waiting for the e-mail that tells me tonight's editor has no questions and I'm all done.

It's a great idea. I just wish I'd had it two years ago. As the old Mennonite is sometimes alleged to say: "Ve are too soon old, und too late schmart."

It's Hilarious

OK, I was wrong about rhyming books when I said the only successful author of a rhyming book was Dr. Seuss.

It turns out Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach, while not technically a kids book, is hilarious. HILARIOUS!

But don't buy the book. Seriously, don't buy the book. You want the audio version because it's read by Samuel L. Jackson. Ohmidog! It's as funny as anything I've ever heard. Seriously. "No you can't go to the bathroom. You know where you can go? THE FUCK TO SLEEP!"

In other news, I have the final revision notes on Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter from Eddie the Agent, who is exuding confidence. He's off to Italy next week for the Bologna Book Fair (My book fair has a first name ...) and when he comes back I want it to be done and waiting for him. I'll have plenty of time because next week is spring break and Tori has been invited to chaperone the senior trip. They're taking a cruise that includes stops in Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Martin. The seniors picked her because of their experience working with her on A Midsummer Night's Dream a year and a half ago. Her ticket is paid for by the senior class.

Everyone sing along with me: Nice work if you can get it.

Anyway, the notes aren't very extensive this time, mostly line notes and an admonition to tighten up a couple of spots. Almost there! There were other conversations with Eddie the last two weeks, but I'll save them for another time.

Meanwhile, still splitting time between work and Scurvy Dogs! and between them I'm not getting much sleep. Gotta get to work right now!

A Slow Week for Scurvy Dogs

Just an update on progress. Damn little.

Wrote a thousand words yesterday and a thousand the day before, but that was news writing for work. Good stories, big news. The hospital laid off 85 LPNs ands nursing assistants and people are understandably upset. But when your hospital is $28 million in debt and the new management has been saying for a year that if something doesn't change (a big infusion of cash from the government) we're going to have to lay off a hundred people, well that's what happens. It almost doesn't qualify as news. "Hospital Does What It's Been Saying It Will Do."

Busy morning. I really want to read a chapter to the kids today, but that means I've got a morning to knock out most of it. So I need to stop this and get to work!

Drives Me Crazy!

I wrote in a blog last year about a couple of phrases that just made me nuts. "Free gift" was one. "Rather unique" was another. Well, there's lots of those out there, people just insist on being wrong headed about language.

A friend just wrote that he was waiting for something "with baited breath," then added "I probably should stop eating worms."

A change of diet might be in order, but it has nothing to do with his breath. The phrase is "waiting with bated breath." Short for abated, as in curtailed. Waiting with bated breath means you're so excited you're actually short of breath.

Drives me crazy!

Feeling like a writer by reading The Writer

Yesterday's mail brought the new issue of The Writer magazine, and there's a lot to read in it this month. It's a little like reading several writing blogs, only they're all right there in your hands, all you have to do is turn the page instead of click on the links.

"10 tips for getting your novel published" includes some good advice, including a couple of things you've been told and told but really, they mean it. Read other books in your genre to learn what's selling and what readers expect, learn what agents want to you to send them (and the unspoken corollary, don't send them stuff they don't want.) There's a timely article on what writers should know about taxes (and we all hope this becomes a major issue soon.) But my favorite was about a guy who was in New York on 9/11 and the event caused him to re-evaluate his life. He moved to L.A. and, by sheer perseverance and hard work, became a writer on "Law and Order: SVU." It was kind of inspiring.

There was a really good article about writing for the children's market in the previous month's issue, and an article on the values and pitfalls of self-publishing, told by six writers who have gone both routes.

If you want to be a writer, write. But more than that, shape your life to support and reinforce the idea that you're a writer, and never use "support and reinforce." It's redundant. But perhaps you want to belong to a book group. Read writing blogs. Take a class. Things that repeat the mantra in your mind, "I'm a writer."

Over the course of the month I'll read pretty much everything in there. Besides any enjoyment or information I get - and there's plenty - it reinforces that feeling in me that I'm a writer.

On another note: Had a brain storm on Scurvy Dogs! that I'm excited about. I was sitting in a Board of Elections meeting when it hit me. I immediately flipped my note pad over and started jotting ideas down. It'll require reworking the front end to set up, but I already knew I have to do that. It'll help bring the whole thing full circle, and it'll be really cool. Need to do a little research. Gotta find my copy of Empire of Blue Water. Which by the way is the best pirate book I've ever read.

More This and That

Reading the two chapters was a success! The kids looked all concerned when the rock slid out from under Jamie's feet, leaving him dangling from a rope 400 feet above the sea. They groaned when I said, "And that's the end of the chapter!"

And they cheered when I said, "But wait, I have a second chapter to read today." I confess, I like it when my audience cheers.

So that worked very well. It also gave me (and their teacher, who is dead sexy and just the best teacher ever) a chance to talk about cliffhangers and "The Perils of Pauline," which were on the screen back when my dad was a kid. I'm not sure Tori's students believed me or even noticed when I said something about "silent movies" because what could that even mean to kids who can watch movies on their telephones.

Tori also had a really cool idea for a project to go along with the reading, and now the kids are all designing covers for Scurvy Dogs! I'll share some with you when they're done.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing: A woman sent me a copy of her book, hoping I'll review it in the Talk Like a Pirate Day newsletter, The Poopdeck, and spur sales for her. I'm not going to because it's not very good, and like I've said before, I honor the effort even if I don't like the result, so I'll not mention it by name.

It's a good idea. It's about using pirate talk in speech pathology to get kids to properly pronounce the letter R. Clever.

But why oh why oh why do people insist on writing children's books in rhyme? Especially when they don't have a clue about meter or making it scan. People think "Oh, it's a kids book. It has to rhyme." Wrong wrong wrong. I have read hundreds of books to my kids as they grew up.We all loathed the rhyming ones, with the obvious huge exception, Dr. Seuss.

In fact, I'll just say it flat out. There has been exactly one successful children's story author who wrote in rhyme. His name was Dr. Seuss. If you're not Dr. Seuss, don't even try. Unless you actually don't care what people think. If it gives you pleasure to write in doggerel, by all means do so. It's your right. But please don't ask me to read the book to kids.

And it's a fact that if you want someone to publish your children's book, don't write it in rhyme. Children's publishers DO NOT WANT rhyming books. Most of them say it right on their web sites, and any agent repping children's books will tell you the same thing. They won't even read them, because they can't sell them.

Must have a lot of friends. I have almost finished reading a book I started four months ago. I'm determined to finish it. There is nothing particularly wrong with the book, no place where I can point and say, 'See! What a hack writer!" It's well researched and competently written on what should be an engrossing subject, a spectacular murder case that convulsed England in 1860. It's just kind of boring, and it's hard to understand why. I guess that's why I keep plowing ahead, just to see if I can figure out what my problem with it is. Because it's my problem. The book won all kinds of awards and the back cover contains all kinds of great blurbs from reviewers.

"A real page turner," one reviewer called it. "Gripping," "a remarkable achievement." Really, if you're going to write jacket blurbs, you ought to read the book first. The only way the reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph could have called it "unputdownable" is if he'd had an accident with a glue pot while reading it.

But I suppose something like , "Meh. I've read worse," would probably not have sold as many copies. All I can say is, the author must have a lot of friends who write dust jacket blurbs. I'm hoping to have similar luck when Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter finally is published.

Boy, reading this I sound pretty damn cranky. I'm usually such a positive guy. I'll try to perk up, although I have to run cover the Board of Elections meeting in an hour, and that would make anyone a little dyspeptic.