Reading and Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Writers are readers, that’s just what we do. If we’re not writing, you’ll probably find us with our face in a book. And that’s just where you could find me the last few weeks. I’ve actually been doing a lot more reading than I probably should have, and very little had to do with my book club.

As you may already know I’m a big fan of Dick Francis, and well, this last month I finally got my hands on all four of Dick and Felix Francis’ books with Sid Halley as the hero. Meaning, I’ve spent a ton of time reading those books in order for a change. I had read three of them, but not all four, and never in order. Boy does it make a difference.

Not always in a good way.

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the books − the writing is fantastic. Dick and his son Felix are excellent story tellers, the problem is they weren’t so great with remembering the details about several of the characters' lives.

Yeah, they’re mostly the secondary characters, but those details matter.

In the first Sid Halley novel, Charles Roland had two daughters, of which the elder one was living out of country with her foreign diplomat husband, and their two children. But in the third book Jenny (Sid’s ex, and Charles’ daughter) is an only child.

Also, at the end of the first book Jenny met a diplomat while visiting her sister and fell in love with him, she was engaged. In the second book, she wasn’t married, there was a man in the picture, two actually, but she wasn't married. In the third book she was married to a Lord but they didn’t seem to have a loving or devoted union, more like they lived separate lives. In the fourth book, Charles has two daughters again, but they are both living out of the country with diplomatic husbands, and neither had any children.

And where Sid's friend, Chico Barnes was concerned, in the third book he’d quit being a private eye to settle down; he’d gotten married, and they were expecting. In the fourth book, years later, his marriage had ended because he’d wanted kids and his wife hadn’t. Excuse me?

It was bad enough that at the end of the third book there was no mention of Sid quitting being a P.I. there was no hint that his bride was pregnant, not one word, yet in the fourth book she was pregnant at the time the third book ended and he quit being a P.I. because of that and what happened near the end of that book.

They are all well written stories, and do work as stand-alone books, which is what they are sold as. They aren’t even marketed as a series, but they do have the same main character, you would think they’d keep the story straight from one book to another.

Though in their defense, Dick Francis never planned to write more than one novel with Sid Halley as the hero. The vast majority of his heroes show up in one novel only. The fact that he does have at least two main characters who show up in more than one novel is the exception, not the rule with him. I get the feeling he didn’t make, and keep, detailed notes about the background of the various characters, and certainly didn’t double check those “minor” details before writing the next book in the series.

And I get it, sometimes it is hard to remember all those details, especially if it is years, even decades between books with that character and you write tons of other novels in between. Who even remembers what they wrote a decade, or more, ago?

Even if I pulled up all my files, I wouldn’t be able to tell which stories were started in 2009, because my computer shows last date a file was modified not when the file was started. I have no idea what date I started any of my stories. I can give guesstimates but not exact dates. I’d have to do math to figure out just the year I started any of my novels, if I can even remember that much.

Come on, give me a break, I wrote Forbidden Connection well over a decade ago, and I’ve been doing Nano for something like fourteen years, and I never once saved starting a new story for just November, I can think of a few times when I started more than one story in a single day let alone a single month.

Anyway, how do you keep track of all those minor details in your past stories? What kind of notes do you have? And have you kept them?

Happy writing everyone.

Insurance Woes by Konnie Enos

My alarm goes off at five o’clock in the morning.

Now it goes off this all fired blessed early not because people have to get up and get out the door early in the morning but because it can take my son several hours to get ready for school though that’s only on the days he forgets to do his laundry the night before. He always forgets to do his laundry.

So yesterday my alarm goes off at the appointed hour.

I moan and roll over but before I can do much more than hit snooze my son walks in my room. “I’m up. Already took my bath.”

Now mind you, I’m not only still groggy, but not out of bed yet, the lights aren’t on and I most certainly haven’t found my glasses yet. “Do you have clean clothes? Did you do your laundry?”

“Mom, didn’t you hear me? I already took my bath.”

In other words, he was already dressed for the day.

Okay then, I rolled back over, he doesn’t have to be up for hours and I was too tired to get up yet.

Then he proceeded to tell me how he’d been running in the back yard, again, but this time he tripped in a hole he hadn’t seen in the dark and slammed his right shoulder into our fence, dislocating it. Of course he did relocate it, but now it was very, very sore. It should be noted our fence is a brick wall.

“Ice it.” I was too tired to deal with it and I wasn’t about to take him to the ER over it. Since no quick care was open at that hour, well he was waiting. I went back to sleep.

A couple of hours later, I finally got up and did check his shoulder.

Yeah it was swollen.

I got breakfast and got dressed while my husband took our daughter to campus for her classes.

Then I took him to the quick care.

Now the one we’ve been going to isn’t normally very busy. Usually in and out within a couple of hours. So, since we got there by nine I assumed we would be home before lunch time.

This time they said it was nearly that long just to be seen.

We waited.

They finally called us back and the nurse checked him in.

We waited some more.

Eventually the doctor came in and moved my son’s right shoulder around enough to have my son grimacing in pain.

Then we waited some more.

Then the nurse came in with paperwork to be signed.

Then we waited some more.

Then they took him to have x-rays done while I waited some more.

Finally we waited for the results.

No fractures, but they gave him a note to be out of school for two days and want him to see a specialist too, before he goes back to school.

By the time they’d released him and we’d dropped his prescription off at the pharmacy, it’s already well after noon.

We go home and get lunch.

Now I’m apprehensive about calling any new doctor’s because far too often around here I find they don’t take our primary insurance.

I make the call.

Oh fun. They do take our primary insurance. What they don’t take is our secondary insurance.

Now isn’t that lovely.

I call my secondary insurance to ask them about finding a provider.

What do they tell me?

“You have ask your PCP for a referral.”

That’s all well and dandy but I don’t have a PCP. They have assigned me to one and I did call the number they gave me but the practice the number got me in contact with had no idea who the doctor assigned to me was. In other words, not at that practice. Furthermore, they didn’t take my primary insurance.

Since my previous PCP closed her practice I have yet to find anyone to replace her who does take both of them.

So now I’m in a quandary.

The quick care sent the films to the doctor we can’t go to, yet I can’t find another doctor anyway. The doctor at the quick care said my son needed to see the specialist before he returned to school or removed his sling.

How is he supposed to do either if I can’t get him into a specialist for lack of finding one which takes both of our insurances?

Of course this isn’t the first time. Since our PCP quit we’ve had multiple issues with getting medical care. And our issues are usually because we DO have insurance.

If we can’t get care with insurance, how are people without it getting care?

So today I’m just a bit frustrated.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Confessions by Bonnie Le Hamilton

I have to confess, I haven’t done a lot of writing, or editing lately. This last week I finally got my hands on all of Dick Francis’ “Sid Halley” books, and I’ve been reading them in order for once. I’d read the first four (it seems his son, Felix, has written a fifth, which I haven’t read yet either) but I’d never read them in order, which frankly could be confusing since all the subsequent ones mention things that happened in the previous ones. And I’m slow reader – this may take me a while.

The thing is, I should be editing. I know I should be, but I haven’t done it in a couple of weeks, and it isn’t just reading taking me away from my computer, I’ve also been doing crafts. I have a site on Etsy now, and I opened a page on Facebook for the crafts. Not that it’s gotten my very far, it hasn’t, but I thought I’d try since every little bit would help now that I have a car payment to make.

Yes, that’s right, I finally have a car again. I’m mobile. Which is another reason I haven’t spent much time on my computer. I suddenly seem to not have enough hours in a day, when before I had too many. I’m still adjusting to this new reality.

There were a lot of things I wanted to be able to do but couldn’t because of the lack of car, now I can do them, but never seem to have enough time.

The biggest problem is not trying to do too many things in a day, because that would be too much stress. Most people would consider a busy day as a mile long “To Do” list and several appointments. Konnie considers it a quiet day if she can get on her computer and write for ten uninterrupted minutes. For me, more than two things on my calendar, and I’m spent long before the day is done.

Today I have two things on my calendar, and I have one on my calendar tomorrow. Yesterday I had two things, the day before – the only thing on my calendar was chores, and I haven’t finished those, so they are still on my “To Do” list, but I wasn’t counting chores, because let’s face it, they are on our “To Do” lists on a daily, or almost daily, basis.

Being as I live alone, I don’t have to do most of them daily, but anyone else would have to do those more often.

And all that brings me back to an earlier post I made about figuring out how much time a character is taking. When mentioning a span of time that has past, and all that the character has done, make sure they had time to do all those things.

If you say a character did A, then B, then C in X amount of time, when it takes a normal person that amount of time to do just A, you have some rewriting to do. And that’s the problem I often have. My characters are either speed demons, and or super human, or both. They can get more done in a single day then I can get done in a single month sometimes.

Then again, a master chef can chop up and prepare a lot of food for cooking faster than I can gather the tools to do the job. For me, it might take me at least an hour to dice a couple of onions and peppers, but someone who does it daily would take a matter of minutes. Skill, and practice can aid someone in doing some things faster than others.

And again, you must consider how motivated a person is. I’ve gotten more done on days when I absolutely had to finish in order for something else to happen, or in order for me to do what was next on my list. Like the day I packed up my car and went over to my sister-in-law’s place of Christmas. Just gathering what I needed to take took time, getting it loaded in my car was another matter. 

And all of it took way longer than I thought it would.

Actually, I thought gathering everything would take the longest, which is why I started the day before, but what took the most energy and time was loading my car. I had to stop and catch my breath several times.

So, skill level, amount of practice, and motivation can change how long it takes your character to complete a task, just make it clear to your reader why your character can manage it.

Happy writing, or editing, everyone. 😊

When You’re not the Norm by Konnie Enos

We have a cat.

Because we have a cat we have a litter box.

We also have dogs and if you know anything about dogs, you know they will chew poop, especially cat poop. For this reason we have to keep the dogs away from the litter box.

The litter box is in the bathroom.

There is only one way into or out of this bathroom. A door we have developed the habit of leaving all but closed except when in use. None of the dogs can open it from this tiny crack, but Tiger, the cat, can.

Now generally speaking Tiger only opens the door far enough to squeeze through himself, he is a cat. The problems arose when it became quite clear this wider opening was sufficient for all the dogs to “nose” it further open.

It was also abundantly clear Tiger wasn’t about to learn how to actually close the door.

New solution: Child safety gate in the door frame.

Now on the surface this seems like a wonderful fix.

The cat can easily jump the gate whenever he wants while none of our dogs are big enough to push the gate over on their own, nor can they jump over it. (Thankfully they haven’t tried their combined weight on it.)

Since this is a “child safety gate” and all the humans in our house are adults, or might as well be (less than six months to go for the youngest), it was readily assumed the gate wouldn’t deter any of us.

After it was installed I sat in my usual place on my bed, where I have a view of the bathroom door and watched.

My husband steps right over.

My daughter, who is the same height as my husband makes it look as graceful as dancing somehow.

Both my sons who are taller than their dad have no issue.

My other daughter then approached the bathroom.

I warned her about the presence of the gate stating, “You’ll probably have to move it out of your way.”

She looked at it. “It’s okay.” Then, with some care, stepped over it.

I swear my jaw dropped. I was stunned. She’s the closest to my height and I was positive I could not step over it.

When it was my turn to enter the bathroom, I measured myself against the gate.

The top of it came to about an inch below my belly button.

When I realized that I had a clear vision of trying to straddle our old dog Jim Boy. Considering the height, the comparison was easy to make.

So I’m the only member of the family who can’t just step over it.

Then we discovered the problem.

I could not figure out how to move it!

For at least two weeks I had to have someone else move the thing just so I could use the bathroom.

Mind you, I’m in my mid to late fifties and vaginally delivered FIVE children!

Yes, there were some close calls before I could get into our only bathroom.

Then I finally figured out how to get it down.

Whew!

But then there was the issue of putting it back up.

In my household I have told my family for decades I won’t do any chore “below my waist”. My reason for this is because way back in the spring of 1971 I broke my back. Within a couple of years arthritis started to set in. Bending over hurts.

Now guess what I would have to do to reset the gate.

You guessed it. Bend over.

Now if I could simply put the gate in place and re-latch it as quickly as I could undo it, then there would be no problems.

Yeah, it’s not simple.

It took me another half a week to finally figure out how to re-latch it but I could not get it to latch before my back was yelling at me.

So though all of this, it seemed the gate was down more than it was up. It seemed to cut down on the dog incidents but they were still happening.

Anyway, finally, one day I actually managed to get the lock set within seconds. Now it’s no problem for me.

But what I thought about while I was fighting with that gate was how any person who doesn’t conform to the average has to adapt to a world not set up for them.

If you’re taller or shorter than average you have to learn to adapt to. If you’re left handed, you learn other ways to do basic tasks.

Being a short ambidextrous person, I find myself adapting a lot.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

New Year's Goals by Bonnie Le Hamilton

It’s that time of year again when everyone’s setting goals and all around the world gyms are overflowing with people who say they want to lose weight. Which is the most common goal people set, but how many achieve it?

The answer is not many, and its mostly because they set goals, but they don’t build a road map toward achieving it. Reaching a goal isn’t done in one step, it takes many steps, and you have to figure out what the first step is before you can take it. However, you also have to set out mini goals along the way.

For you men, think of it in terms of playing football, you reach the goal in ten-yard increments. Aim for the first ten yards, rejoice when you reach it (or surpass it), then move to the next ten yards. 

Or think of it as climbing several flights of stairs. It starts with taking the first step. But if you keep your eyes solely on the top, you miss how far you’ve come from the bottom. You need to celebrate each “landing.” You also need to aim for them, and set a deadline to reach each of them.

This goes for any goals you are setting whether it be about your writing, your health, your education, your job, your finances. No matter what category your goal falls in, in each case you have to map out a plan to reach the top. If not – well, I don’t know who said it first, but I’ve heard it several times, “A goal without a plan, is just a wish.”

So, stop wishing and make a plan!

My goals start with finishing the edits on my manuscript Forbidden Connection. After that I’m thinking I should finish my sci-fi, then I’ll think about all my other started but not finished stories.

And its not like I have a lot of time because I have goals in other aspects of my life as well, and I’m trying really hard to map plans for all them. Which is pretty hard for me, because let’s face it, I’m a pantser when it comes to writing and why should I be any different when it comes to life?

The fact is, I do write with a plan, sort of, its all in my head, not written down. You can ask Konnie, she knows. I’ll ask her to help me brainstorm. She’ll give suggestions which I’ll then shoot down because it won’t fit with what I already have planned, and we’re talking planned, not written yet. I do that a lot.

Of course, I’ve also had to change those plans because they just don’t work. And actually, that is something needed in goal setting. Like last year my goal was to finish editing Forbidden Connection and shop it out. Well, I did submit it, once. Got rejected. It wasn’t really ready yet. It was too soon. And I honestly felt I made a mistake in submitting it when I did, now I’m editing again, this time with the help of an editor. So, I’m back to the same goal I had this time last year, but that isn’t to say I didn’t make progress this last year. I did get one rejection, and my story is a lot further along than it was before!

And I’ve got to remember where I started, which was with a 130 + k word manuscript which I wrote in just 8 weeks. And talk about rough! It didn’t just need cut down, it needed a whole lot of help, in a lot of different ways.

I spent several years editing and revising it, then an editor friend of mine offered to look at it for me before I submitted anywhere. She sent it back to me, informing me it was mostly telling. Back to the drawing board!

And I revised and edited it at least a dozen times between then and the current edits, so you can imagine what a mess the first draft was!

If you want a timeline for how long this had taken, I’ll point out that Konnie’s oldest daughter was a preteen when I wrote the rough draft – she’s now married and expecting. And considering where I lived at the time, it had to be the summer of 2001. Yes, that’s right, almost eighteen years ago. I’ve moved three times since then, and I’ve lost count of how many computers I’ve gone through. Back then it was a desktop which only used floppy disks.

My how times have changed.

Anyway, what are you’re goals for the new year? And do you have a road map to achieve it?

Happy writing everyone! And have a happy and successful New Year!