This Much is True

The contest ends at midnight tonight and is available to everyone, everywhere. Getting more entries come in today so join in and leave a comment on the contest post about a woman you know who is working in a non-traditional job for women (such as mechanic, welder, engineer, offshore rig worker, and anything else that sounds a bit different for a woman to work at).

The geek in me thinks this Project Natal thing looks soo… oh no, there I’ve gone and drooled all over my keyboard. If I win the lottery, or sell the movie rights for my books, maybe I can have this one day.

And while I am excited by the idea, based on my experience with voice recognition software, I don’t think I’ll be winning any trivia games. I can just imagine how it might go:

Machine: Who wrote the books A Few Kinds of Wrong and This Much is True? (What? A girl can dream can’t she? Maybe the trivia game will have that as a question. It’s within the realm of possibility since the books exist and all.)

Me (after fainting and being revived several minutes later): Tina Chaulk.

Machine: No, I am sorry. Team her shock is not the correct answer.

Machine: What is the name of the anthem of Newfoundland and Labrador? (What? That might be a question.  In the super-hard category, you know, for those annoying people who know everything and can quote obscure 18th century poems and whole chapters from the Bible AND every line from the Simpsons. You know the kind I’m talking about. )

Me: The Ode to Newfoundland:

Machine: No, I am sorry. The old do to move the man’s is not correct.

Me: Oh, %*$# off.

Machine: No, I am sorry. Flock of is not the answer either.

“Belletrista is a not-for-profit, bimonthly web magazine which seeks both to encourage cross-cultural understanding through international literature written by women and to increase the visibility of that literature.” In each issue, they highlight new and notable books after sifting through hundreds of pages of publisher catalogs from all over the world. And in this issue, in the New and Notable section for Canada and the US, you can find A Few Kinds of Wrong, along with books like The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, Good to A Fault by Marina Endicott, and Mavis Gallant’s The Cost of Living.

This is my new favourite video. If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, just take three minutes or so to have a listen. And if you’re not doing NaNoWriMo, have a listen anyway, because it’s very catchy.

You can catch more videos from Kristina Horner on YouTube or you can read her blog.

You know when someone calculates the Vampire National Product of a nation (and finds it to be $771.5 million annually), that there’s a bit of a frenzy going on. And there is. It’s all about the new sequel to the movie New Moon, based on the second novel from the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer.  It’s hoped that it will bring in $100 million on this, its opening weekend. I know people who don’t live anywhere near a movie theatre who will drive for hours today to use the tickets they bought last month to see the movie. There’s a whole lexicon to describe, not just Twilight and Twilight related things but the various levels of Twilight fans–from twilighter (a moderate fan) to twi-hard (a more obsessive fan) to twitard (someone really, really out there in obsessive fan love for Twilight), and right back to the people who don’t like Twilight and are called antis. (And if this alleged list of attacks on antis by Twilight fans is true, you might not want to be so vocal about not liking the series.)

And I don’t mind telling you I’m a teensy bit jealous. I really mean a teensy bit because I know the nature of this beast and that even if I could write a vampire book and do it justice, and hit all the right notes that Stephenie Meyer seems to have done with the Twilight series, chances are my vampire book would not create this kind of frenzy. This is an anomaly in the book world, just like when JK Rowling was told she would never make any money writing books for children then released the Harry Potter series, or when Dan Brown published his fourth book about a Da Vinci Code after publishing three novels which didn’t sell more than 10,000 copies each in their first runs. It’s lik e winning the lottery only much better because you made the money by doing something you love. So, the title of this post is facetious but I can’t help being a litle jealous and wondering what would have happened if Jennifer Collins, the main character in A Few Kinds of Wrong maybe drank blood instead of coffee, or could do a few magic spells on the side, or dropped her wrench, left the garage, and ran off to Rome to figure out a Vatican mystery. Hmmm, maybe I should start thinking about a sequel. A Few Kinds of Blood? A Few Kind of Magic? I’ll keep working on it.

The Women’s Work Contest deadline has been extended to November 30th at midnight. So, there’s still lots of time to share your experience of women in non-traditional work by commenting here or by emailing afewkindsofwrong@gmail.com. It doesn’t have to be long or detailed or, as some people have thought, have to be a story of how hard it is to be a woman in a non-traditional job (but if that’s your experience, feel free to share it as well). “I’m a mechanic and have been for four years” is great but longer is fine as well. So, share your experiences (about yourself or someone you know) and you could win books.

Well, the words of the year lists have started coming out and already they have me painfully rolling my eyes (apparently you can’t roll them allllll the way back–once you get so far, it really hurts!) and ranting to my computer. At which time, my computer said, don’t tell me, go post on your blog about it.

Let’s start with the University of Oxford Press. They’ve named ‘unfriend’ as its word of the year. I know they just pick these things to cause debate but for me this particular word and this particular whole list makes me want to ‘unlearn’ what I’ve read on their list. For those of you who don’t know, ‘unfriend’ is a verb and means “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook”. Now, I don’t know what the reasons for this being the word of the year are.  Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program, says that the word has “real lex-appeal” and explains some more in their announcement. It’s not a particularly wonderful word to say as in, say my own personal favourite word, nonchalant. It’s not really a twist on the meaning of words like, for instance, the word Stephen Colbert created and Merriam-Webster named its 2006 word of the year, ‘truthiness’. ‘Unfriend’ seems boring and I’m pretty sure no one will understand it in ten, maybe five, maybe even one year. Really, the whole list has some pretty sad sack words, like ‘hashtag’ (the hash sign you add into twitter posts as a way of tagging certain words) and the ridiculous–I am not kidding you here–’teabagger’ which the Oxford University Press says refers to a person who takes part in the anti-Obama Tea Party protests, but which is much better know as someone who partakes in teabagging which is, um, well, I’ll let Wikipedia tell you about it.

When you look at their complete list of notable words, it’s hard to find one that’s not related to either technology or Obama. Oh, but there’s “tramp stamp’ (a tattoo on the lower back of a woman) which has only been around since about 2003. Oxford University Press, if you were my facebook friend, you know what I’d do, don’t ya? I’ll give you a hint. It’s the word of the year.

Then onto Webster’s New World which has chosen as its word of the year, “Distracted Driving”. Hmm, is that a word? I mean, it’s two words, maybe more of a term of the year. But, maybe some of their other notable words could be more like words. There’s um, well, they say that other notable ‘words’ are ‘cloud computing’ and ‘wallet biopsy’, ‘wrap rage’ and ‘go viral’. Here’s one: Word– “a speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use” or “any segment of written or printed discourse ordinarily appearing between spaces or between a space and a punctuation mark”. Maybe you could get your head around that one and then give us a word of the year.

I know, that’s just two words of the year, but the others are not out yet (at least I couldn’t find them). I’ll get back to you when Merriam-Webster’s and the American Dialect Society tells us their picks. I bet they’ll be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Now, THAT is a word.

Yes, I am behind. I am really, really behind. But I think part of NaNoWriMo means having to be behind at some point. Other than that, I’d just be annoying and going on about how easy it is to do this NaNo thing and you’d hate me. And, see, I have a good reason, or reasons. First the flu laid me out. Two solid days in bed. (I don’t know how people who think they have the flu can get up the energy to go to a flu assessment clinic. I figure it would have taken the house being on fire to get me out of bed.) Then follow that with a sinus infection and pneumonia and you could say yes, Tina, you can be behind. Thankfully, I was ahead the first couple of days so that might just save me. Either way, I ain’t giving up.

And it seems that I am doing well with the whole hating my NaNo novel as well. Seems that’s par for the course, as is hating everything I’ve ever written, at some point while writing it. Just don’t usually hate this much, this fast but then again, don’t usually write this much, this fast. I have requested, in writing, to some friends that they destroy the manuscript if anything happens to me for fear someone would read it. And unlike Nabakov’s crowd, I know they’ll do it.

Having lots of ideas seems to help with NaNo. I started the novel with one idea and then another that had been burning in my brain came up and by gum if I didn’t figure out a way to put both of them in. I’m still learning to just let the writing go, don’t think about it, try not to cringe (even though much of what I’m writing is cringeworthy). If you think maybe you want to throw in a long dialogue about a hair piece one of your characters saw or a journal entry from your character’s diary in 1973 (both examples I’m not actually using but feel free)–go for it. Put it all in and we’ll sort it out in December. Meantime, I have antibiotics to take and lots of writing to catch up with. I’m behind, and if you are, well, let me tell you, you’re not alone. Let’s just keep trying.

Good day one. Thankfully it was one of the nicest days outside that we’ve had in a long time so hubby took the kids outside and I got some writing time. 4867 words. The number of words you have to write every day in order to make 50,000 words in November is 1667  so I have a couple of days worth there and will always try to keep ahead because you never know when something will slow you down or stop you. There are some lessons I learned from day one, some things I need to remind myself as I write. They include:

• Forget the backspace key is there. If you find yourself hitting it, stop it. If you made a mistake, just keep going and fix it in December.
• NaNoWriMo is the opposite of most writing in that if two or three words can be used instead of one, go for it. Edit later. For instance, “almost” becomes “just about”. It’s not good writing practice but probably neither is churning out 50,000 words in 30 days.
• If you go off track and veer off the story (see, I’m being redundant all over the place), just restart without going back and taking all that stuff out. In December, when you edit, that might fit in somewhere else or you might have a great line there that will work. Let it stay. (No backspace key, remember?)
• I heard a few people say they have a 0 word count. There is absolutely no reason for a 0 word count. Type the word “the” and you change your word count to one. Or write the word “I” or “she” or “he” and then a verb and you have two words. Then let the rest come but 0 means you just didn’t show up.
• I think twitter is fantastic for procrastinating NaNoWriMo but is also, you know, unfortunately fantastic for procrastinating NaNoWriMo. Tons of constant updates with the tag #nanowrimo (yet, oddly it is not a trending topic on twitter). So myAlphasmart Neo is even a more important tool for me to write on since no Internet=no twitter.

That’s all for now but please feel free to add your own NaNo lessons or advice.

Okay, I know countup is not a word but why should that stop me? I officially signed up for NaNoWriMo to write 50,000 words in one month. My husband has been told it’s single parent time for him as much as possible and has been warned the housekeeping will decrease (can housekeeping be quantified in numbers less than zero?). He probably won’t see any noticeable difference in the housekeeping anyway since this is, ahem, not my strong suit. My friend gave me a magnet one time that said “Both Of Us Can’t Look Good At The Same Time, It’s Either Me Or The House”. I keep it on the fridge and I know he must look at it and wonder which one is supposed to be anywhere near looking good. Anyway, I digress. So with less than 24 hours left before NaNoWriMo starts, I still am wavering between two novel ideas and haven’t 100% committed to what I’ll be doing. (I know, shocking from someone who took only 21 years to marry her boyfriend.) I’m still leaning toward the one I think will be easier to write but I don’t really have a plot for that, just more characters, not that I have a lot of plot for the other one. Ah, who needs plot? That should really come from the characters anyway. And, as I keep telling myself, these words written in November don’t have to be good words. They just have to get out of my head and onto a keyboard.

Ah, the keyboard, another potential problem with writing 50,000 words in a month. As I’ve told you before, I like to write longhand which then means I have to type that handwritten stuff up later. This will double my work if I don’t type my novel as I go, so I’ve decided to use my beloved AlphaSmart Neo (Neill) for NaNo. But can I write a whole novel on a keyboard? Every time I’ve ever tried to write a lot on a keyboard, I always go running back to my notebook to scribble happily.  Not in November. In November I commit to writing more and writing differently than I ever have before. And publicly because I will do (short) blog posts about it and have a word count somewhere on my web site here. So win or lose, sink or swim, I’m putting it out there. Let the games begin!