Today was overcast, gray sky from the north to the south, from the east to the west, with rain all day, sometimes just mist, sometimes pouring down. It's evening, and the rain has stopped.

This is a day off in the life of writer. I'm working my job. And too tired to think of writing, too tired to read, too tired to watch inspirational or educational videos. Too tired to make lists. Too tired to clean up my desk from the NaNoWriMo typhoon that left detritus everywhere. 

Just too tired.

#tootired #WritingLife #WritingCommunity #NaNoWriMo2020

 Overcast with sun all day; warm and breezy evening.

I finished the month of NaNoWriMo 2020 with a blur of blah. I completed the MG novel draft, adding more scenes, an index, historical notes afterward, at 43,000 words. Still needed 7K for an official win, so I started writing down thoughts about the next novel, a YA also on the 1856 smallpox epidemic. Those thoughts are a stream of consciousness mess. I will have to do some more serious thinking when my brain is coherent and not dead tired.

Although this counted as a "win" for #NaNoWriMo2020  and therefore I am #NaNoWinner2020 it didn't feel like a win. I have a lot to learn about writing MG novels. I'll sort some of that out in the editing process.

Congratulations to everyone participating in NaNoWriMo. Thank you to the event sponsors.

 Thursday, November 19, 2020

Yesterday, there was a large crescent moon setting in the western sky in the evening. Yellow and bruised, and beautiful. Today, tropical heat. Cumulous clouds.

I've crossed the 30,000 word threshold for my 2020 NaNoWriMo novel. It's bad. But it's been a bad year, so that's not a surprise. I love my MC, but he's just not cooperating with showing his awesomeness on the page. My setting is flat. The devastation of the smallpox epidemic of 1856 isn't even pushing through. It's disheartening. 

And I don't have buddy writers. Well, I have one (love her), but I need more!

Will press on. Hoping to have a draft middle-grade novel (knock-on-wood; fingers crossed) at the end of the month.

#NaNoWriMo2020 #WritingLife #WritingCommunity

 Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Tropical heat. Scattered clouds. Intermittent drizzle.

I've written more than 28,000 words on my middle grade historical fiction. My current thinking on the project: 1) I don't know enough culture and history. 2) My main character needs to have more fun. 3) I don't have enough story to make it to 50K. 

On culture and history, I don't think I'll ever know enough. Part of the fun of writing is learning new things. But it's also frustrating to realize how small the drop in the bucket is. 

On fun, I'm writing a story in a dark time--smallpox epidemic, people dying in droves, decimation of a people/culture. So fun isn't exactly what I was looking for. But tweens need something humorous, even dark humor. Not my strength. Need to look for opportunities for the macabre, I think.

On length, it isn't a middle-grade genre problem to be shorter than 50k, but it makes it hard to meet the NaNoWriMo challenge. Maybe I'll add some true history notes at the end.

I'm really grateful for the NaNoWriMo challenge that focuses my writing energy.  Now, I have to get to my dinner, and my novel writing.

#NaNoWriMo2020 #WritingCommunity 

 2020-11-09 Monday, 7pm. Mars rising in the eastern sky. Tropical warm evening.

I've been inside all day, so checking the weather to write that opening line gives me a little connection with the outside world, and is regenerating!

NaNoWriMo. I have been making promises to myself, and breaking them daily. I wanted to write 10,000 words this weekend to get ahead. I barely made 4K to just catch up.

The horror of my writing this 2020 NaNoWriMo story is that it is revealing a lot of flaws in the adult historical fiction I wrote and submitted for publication. The  adult novel timeline is a mess. I really, really worked on it. I went over and over it. I have charts. I have graphs. I have different characters with specific arcs. I spent months editing. And now, by doing a middle-grade story of just one boy who shows up in the adult novel as frequent background and echo, I've found that I have him in three places on the same day--not three places close by where he might have been. No. Three places hours apart in a historical setting where walking is the only option for him and he's 12! Doing all these things on the same day. And it has been like that from the start, in other places. Character actions not lining up with the timeline that would be realistic. Gah!

Facing these problems takes the edge off the fun of writing freely for NaNoWriMo. I've never felt so uninspired and sluggish. 

It helps that we have election returns. Whether they will hold up to the onslaught of narcissism and political feuding remains to be seen. That uncertainty also erodes the forward march of creativity.

Here's to everyone writing.

#NaNoWriMo #NaNoWriMo2020 #WritingCommunity 

 2020-11-05 #NaNoWriMo #NaNoWriMo2020 #WritingCommunity

It's evening. Hot, humid, and too overcast to see the waning moon. (I am sitting in air-conditioning.)

I live in a lovely, tropical island paradise. November 3 was a legal holiday for elections. November 4 was a legal holiday for honoring citizenship. Two blissful days that I intended to dedicate to writing. In the past, I have proven I can write 5,000 words easily on a free day. So I was hoping to push ahead.

Instead I have been saturated with the blahs. Stressed about the election (and determined to keep my head in the sand until the air clears--I did vote!). And on top of that, I have workers doing construction at my house--blasting and drilling to remove the old concrete porch/deck to clear it away in order to build a new one. 

So I had two days of headache. And little writing. I'm barely at the NaNoWriMo daily goal.

Each year, the writing experience is different. Each year, I manage to pull through somehow, although it is rarely a sure thing.

I'm writing a middle-grade historical set in Spanish colonial Guam. 1856 smallpox epidemic. (I already wrote an entire novel about this, with adult characters, but one boy popped up in that novel, and I decided he deserved his own version of the story.)

Encouragement to all (and to myself)--let's keep writing. Stories matter.

 2020-11-01 All Saints' Day and the start of NaNoWriMo.

Weather: full sun. Beautiful day in the tropics.

Mood: A little trepidation. I'm tackling a new genre for me--middle grade. With only one POV character. Nothing like a challenge.

I am a pantser. So my preparation for this month was 

    1) read middle grade novels. That was fun. Read two by Pam Munoz Ryan (Esperanza Rising, The Dreamer) and one by Alan Graetz (Ban This Book!) Started reading another Graetz (Refugee) but November arrived. 

    2) make a middle-grade novel genre bingo card.

There's nothing like procrastination.

Here's hoping everyone writes their novels this NaNoWriMo 2020.

#NaNoWriMo #NaNoWriMo2020 #WritingCommunity

Marianas Milk 2015-06-23

Marianas Milk 2015-06-17

Marianas Milk 2015-06-16

Marianas Milk 2015-06-09

Marianas Milk 2015-06-03

Marianas Milk 2015-06-02

Marianas Milk 2015-05-29

More milk 2015-05-28

I'm missing one from 5/22--will get it up eventually.

Milk 2015-05-21

Milk 2015-05-14

Reviving Marianas Milk

I have revived my cartooning Marianas Milk. Now focusing on the problem of meth abuse in our community.  So posting them as published by Marianas Variety. published 5/13/2015

私はPICで今日の午後じゃないなぜここです...私はウォーターパークに行くに計画した。片付け、そこに着いたラインで待った後、20$を支払う以外に、私はリリースに署名しなければならないと言われました。

私は、リリースを読んで - PICは明らかにその過失はあまりにも高価であることを決定しましたし、その利益に切断されています。今ではPICの過失のコストを想定するために、その顧客が望んでいる。我々は、彼らが（現在はPIC財産上の観光客を強姦で告発立っDemapanクラブメイト含む）雇うを制御することはできません、我々は、彼らが彼らの施設やどんな化学物質や、彼らが使用する製品を維持する方法を制御することはできません。彼らは怠慢であることが自由になりたいので、しかし、我々はもはや、その通常のケアに頼る許可されません。リリースには、あなたの死であれば、その過失の結果、あなたの相続人は、過失のためにPICを訴えることができないことになっていることを、とても極端です。

普通に注意する一切の責任を否認しようとしていない - 一つは、過失の主張への最高のビジネス応答がケアの普通の基準を維持するために高められた努力だろうと思うだろう。だから私は、リリースします（私はそれが法廷で耐えられないであろう疑いも）署名しないだろう。ので、私は自宅に戻ってよ。私は少しのビーチに向かうでしょう。彼らはゲストがリスクとPICの過失のコストを想定する必要停止するまで、私は他の人がPICをボイコットすることを勧めます。

Here's why I'm not at PIC this afternoon...I planned on going to the water park. Packed up, got there, waited in line, and then was told that besides paying $20, I would have to sign a release. 

I read the release--PIC has apparently decided that its negligence is too expensive and is cutting into its profits. Now it wants its customers to assume the cost of PIC's negligence. We have no control over who they hire (including the Demapan club mate who now stands accused of raping a tourist on PIC property); we have no control over how they maintain their facilities or what chemicals and products they use. But we are no longer allowed to rely on their ordinary care, because they want to be free to be negligent. The release is so extreme, that if their negligence results in your DEATH, your heirs are supposed to be unable to sue PIC for negligence. 

One would think that the best business response to claims of negligence would be heightened effort to maintain ordinary standards of care--not trying to disclaim any responsibility to be ordinarily careful. So I wouldn't sign the release (even though I suspect it wouldn't stand up in court); and so I'm back at home. I'll head to the beach in a bit. I would encourage others to boycott PIC until they stop requiring guests to assume the risk and the cost of PIC's negligence.



И вот почему я не на PIC во второй половине дня ... Я планировал идти в аквапарк. Упакованный, получил там, ждал своей очереди, а затем сказали, что кроме платят $ 20, я должен был бы подписать документ.

Я прочитал релиз - ПИК, видимо, решил, что его халатность является слишком дорогим и резки в своих прибылей. Теперь она хочет, чтобы ее клиентам взять на себя расходы по неосторожности ПИК. Мы не имеем никакого контроля над тем, кто они нанимают (в том числе помощник Демапан клуба, который сейчас обвиняется в изнасиловании туриста на PIC собственности), мы не имеем никакого контроля над тем, как они поддерживают свои мощности или какие химические вещества и продукты они используют. Но мы никогда больше не разрешается полагаться на свои обычные заботы, потому что они хотят быть свободными, чтобы быть небрежным. Выпуск такой крайности, что если их халатность приводит к вашей смерти, ваши наследники, как предполагается, не сможет подать в суд за халатность PIC.

Можно было бы думать, что лучший бизнес ответ на заявления о халатности будет повышенный усилий для поддержания обычных стандартов медицинской помощи - не пытаюсь не несут никакой ответственности, чтобы быть обычно осторожны. Поэтому я бы не подписать релиз (хотя я подозреваю, что это не будет стоять в суде), и поэтому я вернулся домой. Я буду отправиться на пляж в немного. Я хотел бы призвать других к бойкоту ПОС, пока они не отказаться от требования гостей взять на себя риск и стоимость халатности ПИК.