Se Hace Camino Al Andar

So, after my whining yesterday, I finally shut up and managed to write a few words. Sadly, I’ve yet to break 5000, much less 10000 or 15000 as most participants have by now. I’m using a trial version of Ulysses software, which has a nifty full screen feature that blocks out everything on your desktop. It works pretty well, unless you forget to take your IM client offline. I was interrupted yesterday by an IM and from there, other interruptions popped up. But I’m glad I got more writing in.
I feel like my story is starting to go somewhere and my characters are shaping up. I’m working on incorporating the internal monologue sections I wrote the first week into the actual plot, so technically I have more than 2092 words written but I won’t count those until they become part of the story.
Whether or not I reach 50K words, I do feel that I have something that could be workshopped into a decent short story, and that makes me feel good!

Technorati Tags: NaNoWriMo

Last week, we went veggie and it wasn’t difficult at all, though we did miss our protein. Even though beans and legumes have lots of protein, it’s not the same as a nice piece of chicken. This week, we’re keeping it simple. Since Alice and I are going to Albany this weekend, I only have to make dinner four nights this week, and Thursday’s dinner is guaranteed to have leftovers for Henry to eat while we’re gone. Tonight, I’m also making a dish for my neighbors down the hall who just had twins last week!

Monday: Oven baked breaded Chicken tenders with broccoli.

Tuesday: Carmelized onion and potato fritatta (Thanks to @bakingandbooks for the recipe in 140 characters!) with a salad.

Wednesday: Vegetarian Tostadas with rice and beans

Thursday: Chicken parm. When it comes to chicken parm, I’ve tried fancy versions and healthy versions but I always come back to my mom’s partner’s recipe. It’s straight-up Ragu brand sauce and block mozzarella cheese, and yes… it HAS to be Ragu!

For more meal ideas, visit The Organization Junkie.

Technically, in my head, I am still participating in NaNoWriMo, so I think the button is totally not misleading anyone. You can rest assured though that I will not be putting up a Winner button. Not this year, anyway. Oh you didn’t know? I am totally self-defeatist! Totally.

Here’s the thing. I have a process and in the past, this process has worked really well for me. It involves staring into space for a long time, and looking like I’m not doing anything. This process doesn’t really work when you no longer have the luxury of time, nor your own space in which to write. So, I need to find a new process… or something. A lot of it is time management. I need to be on top of all my other shit in order to have the mental space to write. It’s hard to sit and think about putting words on paper when you know the bathroom needs to be scrubbed, the living room needs to be vacuumed, the kitchen needs to be cleaned and on and on. All of these things need to be crammed into short spans of time.

I’m whining! Stop it, self. Alice is napping, the cake is cooling, I have some time before I need to ice it. Time to put some more words on paper. See you later.

Technorati Tags: NaBloPoMo, NaNoWriMo

Twittermoms is running a contest sponsored by Airwear , maker of environmentally sound eyewear, and Airwear’s Lighter.Safer.Greener campaign spokeswoman, Beth Aldrich, a green living expert.   The contest encourages bloggers to share their tips for incorporating green living into everyday life. I think most people know about switching to energy-efficient lightbulbs, recycling, using cloth bags at the supermarkets. It hasn’t taken long for these seemingly small actions to become standard practice, which is amazing, because it amounts to a change in culture, which usually takes at least a generation. So, kudos to us!

But do you ever wonder if there is more that you could be doing, in terms of reducing waste and using less resources to begin with? We recently made some changes in our household to take green living one step further, and –bonus!– we save money!  So, here are my three eco-friendly tips:

1. We recently visited friends in Seattle, and being the mother of a messy toddler, it didn’t take me long to notice that there were NO paper towels or napkins in their kitchen! None!  What do they use instead? Easy! Cloth napkins and washcloths. I mean, every kitchen has dishtowels usually but to use cloth for everything? Novel idea–to me, anyway! Soon after we returned home, we used up our last roll of paper towels and seized that opportunity to make the switch to a paperless kitchen. I went to Target and stocked up on cloth napkins, washcloths and more dishtowels. Since these items are small, they do not take up much additional space in our hamper. Each person gets their own cloth napkin for mealtimes, and reuses it until it is too dirty to be used, then it goes into the wash. I generally use one washcloth all day to wipe my daughter’s face and hands after she eats, then toss it in the hamper at the end of the day.  Dishtowels are reused until laundry day. I also bought cheap cloth rags specifically for housecleaning, or I rip up old t-shirts that have seen better days . Instead of grabbing a paper towel to wipe spills off the floor or do other household cleaning, I use these rags.
2. I buy in bulk at the supermarket. Buying in bulk means you waste less packaging, and you also save money. I used to think shopping at Whole Foods was a luxury but I found that by taking advantage of WF’s bulk selection, I actually save money. I stock up on family favorites like granola and animal crackers, and I also buy dried beans among other things.  (You use even less packaging if you bring your own containers to the store!)
3. I freecycle! Instead of throwing out things we’ve outgrown, no longer need or want, we post the items to our local Freecycle listserv. This keeps more of our “stuff” out of the landfill, which is great especially for those plastic things that live on forever in a landfill. We also save money when we find things on Freecycle that we, in turn, need or want.

Check out the Airwear contest below to submit your own tips for green living for a chance to win Airware eyewear for your whole family!

Technorati Tags: airwear, contest, giveaway, green living, twittermoms

Yes, yes. I’m behind in EVERYTHING. I know. NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, life… the usual. You’ll notice that my word count is actuall less than what it was before. I have a good reason. All the stuff I wrote before is still there, but right now, it’s not part of the story. It will be, eventually. As I re-read the words I wrote, I realized that I had a whole lot of internal monologue on my hands, right? but no semblance of a plot and the characters were loosely formed.  Then, I got stalled because there was no story to tell. So, I gave it a rest for a few days, waiting for the idea to come to me, the solution, really to my block. And it did come to me, in the form of a dream. I tell you, these pregnancy dreams are wild, just wild and they make great fodder for storytelling. This dream was particularly good fodder.  In one fell swoop, I was given characters, some dialogue, a setting and a semblance of a plot.

When I woke up, I wrote down what I remembered of the dream, and used that to launch my story. It gave me a concrete event to work with– I had to come with a reason for the actions in my dream, and I had to invent the consequences of these actions. From there, the story has unfolded. I’ve had to make some decisions about the characters and since I’m splicing in the text I wrote originally, I have to write good segues in keeping with the flow of the story’s plot. Having something tangible and concrete to work with makes all the difference in making word count progress!

Technorati Tags: NaBloPoMo, NaNoWriMo

We’re going vegetarian this week!

Monday: Butternut Squash with Garlic, Sage and Pine Nuts, served with penne. (Recipe from RecipeGirl.com)

Tuesday: Potato and Autumn Vegetable Hash, from Epicurious.com

Wednesday: Mujadara, from VegetarianTimes.com

Thursday: Chickpeas with Tomatoes and Spinach, served with rice.

Friday: Naan pizzas with grilled veggies and goat cheese.

Visit the Organizing Junkie for more meal ideas!

Technorati Tags: Menu, menu plan monday, vegetarian

So I forgot to post yesterday. Oops. As it is, I didn’t meet my goal of writing another 1666 words yesterday. I wrote maybe 500 words before I realized that I was really tired and needed to go to sleep, especially since I’d committed to going to the gym in the morning.
In any case, my latest thoughts on my novel are that I have way too much internal monologue and not enough of a story. I just read a chapter in Writing Down The Bones about that classic English teacherism, “show, don’t tell.” Jeez, how many times did I say that to my own students? I definitely need to show more, if not tell less. So, my next step is to somehow glean from my writing thus far an actual story. I think it might be helpful at this point for me to map out a story, even if I don’t follow the map exactly.
Also, last night, as a writing exercise, I wrote a poem. It’s been a good long while since I wrote a halfway decent poem, and I’m not totally embarrassed by this one, so I’ll share it with you. (The exercise I gave myself was to rewrite 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens.)

13 Ways of Looking at Myself

I
Hollow Ears
Perceive No Sound
But Eyes Take All

II
The Gift of Sound
Opens a Window Into
The World

III
The World Grows
As Sound Becomes
A Burden

IV
The Burden Is A
Cacaophony Of
Sensations

V
The Mind Reels
As The Cacaophony
Levels Its Chaos

VI
Quiet Is Sought
And Ears Become
Hollow

VII
But Hollow Ears
Do Not Empty
The Mind

VIII
How To Reclaim
The Innocence of Silence
Is The Task

IX
The Task Threatens
To Prove Futile
And There Is Despair

X
Hope Comes To
Chase Away Despair
And Futility

XI
Learn To Turn Off
The Mind And
Innocence Will Follow

XII
In Innocence There
Is Faith and Love
But Ears Are Not Hollow

XIII
Eyes Take All
Heart Takes All
Sound Subsides

Technorati Tags: NaBloPoMo, NaNoWriMo

It took me a long time tonight, after putting Alice to bed, to come down enough from the energy of the day to sit and write. I find that I need a transition between the day’s events and beginning to write. I’m not the best at articulating my needs, and it took a bit of struggle to make it known to my poor husband what I needed. I’m not even sure now that I was at all successful in conveying my need for silence and space.  One thing that I’m discovering in this process of writing a long work (as opposed to a short paper) is that I have a process that involves roundabout ways of getting to where I need to be, that I need to switch my brain off for awhile, then start it up again. From the outside, this looks like sullenness, aloofness  and idleness but really, it’s just me retreating inside to dig around until I find the part that I need to re-ignite my engine. I need to communicate that better to my partner and I also need to be more assertive in making sure I get what I need. It’s tempting to make myself leave the house to write and think, but where would I go? I write late at night, after Alice has gone to bed and in any case, writing elsewhere often backfires on me as I get too distracted by people-watching. I write better at home, so I need to make a writerly space for myself, both literally and figuratively.

In terms of the actual writing I got done today, there is a theme developing and I wrote quite a few paragraphs that I think represent the true essence of where I want the novel to go. Anne Lamott was right… the first few paragraphs I wrote were pure crap but it led the way to better crap, crap that I’m not too embarrassed to show people. If you’d like to see it, I have it posted at Book Oven, where you can leave your (constructive) two cents for me. You can find my project here, but you may need to sign up for Book Oven in order to see the page but I’ll need to add you as a team member in order for you to see it. Shoot me an e-mail if you’d like access.

Technorati Tags: NaBloPoMo, NaNoWriMo

Monday: Crockpot Salsa Chicken, from Jenn Fowler at Frugal Upstate. I bought chicken breasts on special at Whole Foods last week, and popped them into the freezer when I got home. Jenn says that frozen chicken can be used in this recipe but it might require more liquid at the end of cooking. Noted! I’ll serve the chicken with brown rice and broccoli.

Tuesday:  BiBimBap. I think it’s the perfect comfort food and I’m craving lots of vegetarian dishes lately. My husband adds tons of hot sauce, I add none. LOL. ( Oh, what is BiBimBap, you ask? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibimbap)

Wednesday: Burritos! I’m also craving lots of Mexican food. I’ll use the leftovers from Monday’s salsa chicken for these burritos and throw in a few more veggies, along with guacamole.

Thursday: Perogies. It is yet to be seen if I will make these from scratch or just buy locally-made perogies.

Friday: Veggie burgers. My usual recipe produces a thick burger, which I’m not feeling right now. Either I’ll find a better recipe, or I’ll buy them.  I’ll serve them up with fries and a salad.

Technorati Tags: menu plan monday