This Much is True

Yes, that’s snow falling on my blog. Most of the blog is white so it doesn’t disturb reading much so I decided to do it. I like it. And I don’t have to shovel it. It’ll just be snowing on my blog until after the new year.

Last week, I visited a book club who had read A Few Kinds of Wrong and invited me to come by and talk with them about it. Although the host didn’t know me when she chose my book, one of the other members recognized me as our children go to the same school. So, she asked me if I would come and I said yes, thinking that it was a month away and maybe I wouldn’t be nervous by the time I got there. So when the night came, I was wondering what I had gotten myself into and, I have to say, I was quite nervous. I don’t like being the centre of attention or talking much about myself to people I don’t know. And I was afraid people might not like the book (doubt-filled as per last week’s post) and even though I knew they wouldn’t invite me to their book club to shred the book, I felt I would know if they didn’t like it. Luckily there wasn’t any such response (or they hid it very well) and  they seemed to really love the book. It was so interesting to sit down with people I don’t know and to listen to them talk about my book. They had really great insights and comments and questions that made us all think about the book and the characters. It made me realize how people could see something that I didn’t, or how something I tried  to do subtly in the book actually came across to people. Sometimes someone would ask a question and someone else would answer it because she remembered some minute detail or knew the characters well enough that she could answer it. I loved that. It was like the people in the book actually had their own lives and that’s how I feel about them, not that I created them but that I just wrote down the stuff that happened to them. I loved hearing how certain parts touched the readers and affected them. It turns out I was not the centre of attention at all. The book was, as well as the women in the group since the meeting was about their opinions and questions.

I’ve heard of so many book clubs in Newfoundland lately (and everywhere else but I tend to hear about the ones here) and it really makes me happy that we’re reading lots of books and then talking about them. And I think most of them, as with the one I attended last week, have people taking turns choosing the books so you might end up reading something you wouldn’t have thought of reading yourself, thereby expanding your reading horizons. If you’re in a book club and are interested in reading A Few Kinds of Wrong, check out the suggested book club questions included on the A Few Kinds of Wrong page (best for after you read the book as there are a couple of spoilers), and feel free to contact me. If you’re not in a book club, but love to read, consider joining one or creating your own. The reasons to join a book club, I heard the other night, were things like to have adult company and conversation, and to motivate you to read a book when it’s so hard to find time to do so. I’m glad Newfoundland and Labrador seems to have a burgeoning book club scene. The more people who are reading and discussing books, the better, I say, especially if they include local books in the mix.

Well, I don’t really know you but I love what you said when you called Perez Hilton out as a “talentless dope”. This gives me hope that maybe there could be an end to the whole trend of people, who are devoid of talent, somehow becoming celebrities and being yammered on about on “entertainment” shows. So what will any waitress who has ever “served” Tiger Woods, and Jon Gosselin, and Michael Lohan, and Octomom, and anyone who has come in contact with Michael Jackson in the past fifty years, and anyone who has the last name “Kardashian”, and Spencer Pratt, and Heidi Montag, and…(well, we could go on a long time here but the idea of all these people is making me quite nauseous) do with themselves if the trend ends? Who cares?

Thank you, Sam. You’ve given me hope.

I’m not sure when I became a fan of Coronation Street. I think I watched it my entire life because surely my mom watched it while I was an infant. It was a constant in our home. When Coronation Street was on there was to be no talking and no answering the phone. And somewhere along the line, I started to like it. Maybe it’s how the show doesn’t drag things out for months and months like American soaps, maybe it’s because the people on it don’t all look perfect and they drink and they smoke and they even go to the bathroom. They eat toast in the morning, sitting at their tables, hair sticking off , faces reflecting how tired they are. They don’t look perfectly coiffed and wear their high heels and designer gowns around the house.

And they have memorable characters. Maggie Jones played one such memorable character–Blanche Hunt, a woman who never held anything back and could cut you down with a look or a put-down sharp enough cut through the toughest skin. Maggie Jones passed away this week at age 75. She played her last scenes in October but we in Canada will have to wait a good while to see those as we are several months behind in our episodes of Coronation Street. RIP Maggie Jones and thanks for all the laughs. If you’ve never seen her in action or want to again, here’s a video of her at an AA meeting, there to support her step-grandson. For Canadian viewers, the first part won’t be much of a spoiler as we all know Peter has a problem by now but if you go past 1:55 on the video, other spoilers will be revealed. It’s the first 1:55 that is classic Blanche anyway. No one could deliver those cutting lines like Maggie Jones. Also, check out a BBC video which lets you see Maggie Jones on Corrie in the 70s.

Some things can just make you smile with tears in your eyes. What simple yet powerful things we can do if we just choose to do so.

You can listen to an Interview About A Few Kinds of Wrong from CBC Radio’s Weekend Arts Magazine with the always fantastic Angela Antle. (Contest referred to in the interview is closed but please feel free to add your stories about women in non-traditional work here.)

In a totally non-techie way, I drew names out of a hat and the three winners of the Women’s Work Contest are Erin, Rosalind, and Marion Quinton Brake. Winners have been contacted but I wanted to add their names here too and officially end the contest. However, if anyone would ever like to contact me with stories about women in non-traditional work, please do and I will post it on my blog. I love hearing about these women. Thanks to everyone who entered and those who promoted the contest as well.

Phew, it’s over. I did it. I wrote 50,000 words (50,044, to be exact) and made a novel with a beginning, middle and end in one month. And what did I win? The picture you can see in this post and a certificate I can print out and fill out myself. Not even personalized. But, of course, I got more than that. I learned a few things from doing NaNoWriMo.

I learned that I have a lot of determination and can do most things I set my mind to. Some people have seen this in me before (my husband has been telling me it for years), but I consider myself much more of a doubter. I like to hedge my bets and always lay out the possibility that I will fail, so as to prepare others  not to expect too much of me, but also to not set myself up for too big a fall. So, normally, when I got the H1N1 followed by pneumonia four days after starting NaNoWriMo and couldn’t write anything for a full week, I would have said, “oh, I really wanted to do NaNo but, with everything else going on this month, I’m way too far behind to catch up.  I’ll keep trying and we’ll see.” Might have thrown in a “doesn’t look good”. But after I got well enough to sit up and write again, I didn’t say that. I said, “I can catch up and I’m going to do it.” I didn’t have a doubt I could or would do it. If it meant staying up every night until 1:30 or 2:00 writing, I would get it done and there were a good few of those nights, especially in the last week. If you could see me, you’d see those nights in the ugly, black circles under my eyes. But look up above those circles and you’d see a bit of pride in those eyes. Not that I wrote the 50,000 words, but that I didn’t doubt myself.

I learned that I can write a full novel on a keyboard. I also learned that I don’t like it. I found myself longing to write with a pen and notebook. But I needed to keep a word count and pen and notebooks take up a lot of time manually counting the words so I typed into my Alphasmart Neo. I don’t know how people do NaNo on laptops or dekstop computers. My Neo went everywhere with me and I could type almost anywhere. Well, except the bathtub. I love writing in the bathtub but I didn’t trust myself not to drop my Neo in the water (although, from what I hear, a good drying out and that thing would run perfectly again–another reason to love the Neo).

I learned that writing (almost) every day, does make you write more and it does make the creative side of your brain work more. Now, maybe it’s my usual creative procrastination, but I thought of three new ideas for books while writing my NaNo novel and jotted notes to remember my ideas about them. They’ll be going in notebooks soon to see how they feel and if the characters talk to me enough for me to know I want to hang with them for a few months or years. I think I’m going to try to write more often and not hold back the muse as much (now, see, that was the kind of doubt-filled statement I’m used to).

I learned that I might not do NaNo again. Right now, I have no great urge to do it again. It was just something I wanted to prove to myself I could do and I did. I came out of it with a 50,044 word novel that is really, really not good. I know it’s not supposed to be good, but there were many times during the process when I kept thinking that I would either never look at this manuscript again or look at it only as an outline, that if I wanted to write this story (and I would like to), I should ignore the NaNo novel and start out new. So, I’m not sure it’s a great use of my time, this 50,000 crappy words in a month (check out this cartoon at Will Write for Chocolate). It’s been a good use of my time this year, since it helped me learn all these things and again, to prove it to myself that I can do it, but I’m not sure doing it another year is something I need or want to do.

So, it’s been quite a November, what with writing the 50,000 words, promoting my new book, the women’s work contest (winners will be picked and revealed soon), H1N1, pneumonia, sinus infection, H1N1 lineups for vaccinations, birthdays, and just the regular day to day. Now, that it’s all done, though, I can relax. What? How long until Christmas? Oh, crap! Gotta go!

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.