Happy Birthday by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Okay, here goes, I still need to work on setting writing time, but this week has been a bit difficult because 1) I get paid this week, so I also have to pay bills this week 2) there is a holiday coming up 😊, lots of things will be closed Thursday including the banks, and finally 3) Friday is my birthday.

And yes, before anyone tries to remind me, it’s also Konnie’s birthday. I’m hardly going to forget that! Especially because of all the fights we had growing up about our birthday parties.

And believe me we fought.

First there was the cake. Konnie likes German chocolate cake with all those pecans and coconut. I’m not much for nuts in most of my sweets and I can’t tolerate coconut (it’s the texture – hate it) let alone the cherry on top (can’t stand cherries either). I always wanted an apple-spice or carrot cake, or a simple white cake with chocolate frosting. Anything but German chocolate, please!

Second there was the guests. At first, Konnie didn’t mind boys being at our parties, mostly because the majority of the guests were family, but about the time we turned ten she wanted a slumber party – as in no boys. My best friends were boys. One was even our cousin.

You get the picture.

As we moved into our teens, I did make friends with girls, but by then I also wanted boy/girl parties with dancing and music involved. Konnie still wanted a slumber party.

By our late teens we were having two parties, my boy/girl party during the day and her slumber party at night, and generally neither on our actually birthday. I usually got the week of our birthday, and she took a week later.

Actually, she was smart. Very few people were ever available for my parties because they always had plans with their family, whereas those same girls could make Konnie’s slumber party.

But that caused other problems. You wouldn’t believe how many people showed up at either party with just one present! Like they forgot there was two of us, or they expected us to share, and just as bad were the ones who got us identical gifts.

I know I mentioned our 6^th birthday when Konnie ended up with cactus tines or spines or whatever they’re called in her hands, and I had to open every gift, but have I mentioned our eight birthday where one aunt gave us a badminton set, our mother gave her a doll and me a teddy bear, and everyone else gave us identical gifts.

Maybe I have mentioned it.

But I also remember more than one of her slumber parties where the guests showed with just one gift in hand then the instant they saw me, they were like, “Oh, man I forgot!”

How can you forget someone is an identical twin?

Okay, now I can see it, when no one I know now is faced with having to tell us apart on a daily basis, but I’m talking about back when we still lived in the same house! Most of these people only saw us when we were together, yet they forgot there’s two of us?

Which seems weird now, because back then I was the one being forgotten, but now I tend to get more birthday greetings than Konnie does. Don’t ask me why. The last birthday party I threw for myself, on our birthday no less, only two guys showed up but neither brought gifts. (No one had RSVP’ed, though I’d asked them to.) And a week later several of those absent girls showed at our place for Konnie’s slumber/birthday party, but only a couple had two gifts. Yet now I have more friends then family who wish me a happy birthday while Konnie gets birthday greetings mostly just from family.

Why is that?

Now we don’t have the same friends, we don’t live close enough together for there to be overlap, but now I’m the one getting more birthday greetings.

Though I might add, I'm only getting greetings (mostly on facebook) and not many gifts. In the gifts the department, she probably gets more, because, let’s face it, she doesn’t live alone. Then again, maybe not. I do get gifts from a few friends whereas she doesn't.

And I could say more about our birthday, but the more important birthday is tomorrow, not Friday. Independence Day, our country’s birthday.

And with that I’m going to say, “Have a great weekend!”

Happy Birthday America, and Konnie.

The Joys of Parenting by Konnie Enos

Recently I asked my youngest daughter, Melinda, if she was going to go to Wal-Mart with me.

My husband told her, “Your mom will probably let you drive.”

Both of us were wondering if he was daft or something.

When Melinda got her learner’s permit I started letting her drive, at first only some of the time, but gradually it became most of the time. When she got her license it became pretty much anytime she’s in the car. So it’s pretty much a given she’d be driving if she went with me.

In fact, there have been multiple occasions where I needed to be going somewhere and I couldn’t immediately see my keys.

“Melinda, do you have my keys?”

Sometimes the answer is no. Okay, the search is on.

Sometimes the answer is, “I’ll check.” Then she either tell me no, or throws the keys at me.

Sometimes she’ll say, “I’ll get them.” Unless she’s going with me, then she’ll say, “I have them.”

I have enough trouble misplacing things as it is but now I never know if I simply forgot where I put them or they’re somehow buried in my purse or on the bed, or she has them.

Of course my misplacing things isn’t nearly as funny as someone not being able to see something that is clearly in front of them.

We’ve had several incidents, all within the same week or so where Royce might have wondered if his vision was going.

The first one happened when he was looking for the seasonal, as in searching where it should be kept and where it is usually found.

I finally ask him what he was looking for. When he told me, I told him I’d last seen it on the table. Now at the time our table was covered, mostly in groceries which hadn’t been put away yet. He began his search there but still was not seeing it.

I finally looked up from what I was doing and my eyes happened to fall right on the elusive bottle of seasoning. "It's right there in front of you."

He starts frantically looking in the general area in front of him. “Where.”

I tap the cap.

“I’m blind.” He cracked up.

Then a few days later he told me he couldn't find the aluminum foil. I didn’t want to get up and search myself so I told him where I’d last seen it, on the table.

Nope, he'd already searched it completely. So I headed for the kitchen but got no further than the end of the hallway. From there I could see the table. "I can see it from here."

After a moment he finally sees it. "I am not blind."

I went back to my room only to have him say we were out. I knew for a fact there was another roll so I told him exactly where it was in the pantry.

A moment later I hear, "I swear I am not blind."

Then, less than a week later, he turns to me, “Have you seen Tony?”

The last place I had seen his brother was their bedroom, in his bed. From where I was sitting, I could see their bed. I glanced toward it. "That's the last place I saw him."

"What the... The last place I look is the first place I should have looked, right above me."

Yes, they have bunk beds.

Having kids can provide some humorous situations. Because Royce is, well who he is, there’s barely a day that goes by that he doesn’t at least attempt to get me to laugh. He considers it a challenge and knowing it’s even harder to get such a reaction out of Bonnie, he has started calling her with his efforts.

Yes, he can get her to laugh.

 But I think one of my favorite Royce just being himself but it was funny was an exchange between him and his sister, Melinda.

First Melinda again reprimanded him, “Stop yelling.”

“I’m not yelling. I’m screaming loudly.”

“What do you think the definition of yelling is? Whispering?”

“What do you think the definition of minute (time) is? Minute (size)?”

I’m still laughing.

Then this exchange when Royce showed Melinda a puzzle. She glanced at it and gave him an answer.

He said, “95% of adults can’t figure that out.”

“95% of adults aren’t geniuses.”

He could only nod. “Valid response.”

Being a parent can sure have its hilarious moments especially when you have children on the spectrum. We know for sure Royce is and we suspect Melinda is. She’s working on getting evaluated now.

Oh, and next week being what it is, Happy Birthday, U.S.A. and Bonnie.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Scheduling Writing Time by Bonnie Le Hamilton

I never realized how hard it is to write consistently when you have other things taking you away from your computer, but now I’m in that place. I haven’t so much of edited my current WIP in the last several weeks. I just keep running out of time -- more like wasting time.

Anyway, I was thinking about how I had to work out some writing time for myself when I came across a blog on Pinterest. The post is on blog.janicehardy.com titled Scheduling for Writing Success.

The author, Shanna Swendson, says, “I’ve found that scheduling is one of the best ways to find more writing time. This applies whether you’re trying to fit writing around a full-time job or writing full-time.”

She said, if you make the decision in advance to write at a certain time, when that time comes, you don’t need to decide between several activities, but rather just between whether or not you will do as you promised yourself you would do.

She also says, “Organizational and productivity gurus suggest that you don’t even make a to-do list. You make a schedule of when, exactly, you’re going to do those things and you’re more likely to get them done.”

She also said, “I resisted keeping a schedule for non-working hours because I value my free time, but I found that I had much happier and more productive weekends when I scheduled them.”

She went on to say by scheduling her free time she was making conscious choices of what to do with her time, she was doing more things she truly enjoyed (as in not just writing) during her weekends.

She did say to schedule breaks into it, and even mentioned doing her schedule in half hour increments, even if what she’s doing wouldn’t take a half hour, so when something comes along to throw her schedule off, she has time built in to catch up. But she also says to schedule bathroom breaks. Okay, I’m not going that far, my bladder is in control there, sorry.

However, she has a point about goal setting and actually getting things done.

I can tell myself all I want I will write on a given day, but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to let little things, like playing games, surfing the web, or watching TV get in the way of writing. But if I have writing scheduled, well, so far, I’m only writing when I a normally write to do my share of the blog.

Though I do think it will help me, because today, I have actually put my phone aside to write, because it was on my schedule. Then again, my schedule got changed a couple of times.

Monday, I scheduled writing time. Didn’t manage it. I should have, once I finally got home, but I was tired. I took a nap then my sister-in-law needed some help, and I’m afraid I spent too much time over there. Tuesday was off to a bad start when my sister-in-law called saying she needed to go to the emergency room. I hadn’t managed to get breakfast yet.

Don’t worry, no broken bones, just badly bruised.

But I was about fifteen minutes late for my mission assignment at the book scanning center (without stopping for lunch). Thankfully they understood me being late. Unfortunately, the site was down. I couldn’t do my job.

Time to change my schedule, again.

Sometimes life just gets in the way. You have to be able to adjust.

In this case, the book scanning center had to adjust when I work this week.  

Actually, there was a lot of rescheduling happening, because last Tuesday, I’d forgotten I had an appointment on Monday morning (which had been scheduled 3 months ago) and I didn’t have time to go to the center before my appointment, so I ended up being about an hour and half late. Now normally, me being able to make that time up would be impossible since I normally volunteer at the visitor’s center Monday afternoons, but I had taken the place of a fellow who couldn’t do his shift on Friday, so he was taking my shift on Monday.

Meaning, I was able to make up the time. I just got home later than normal. I already mentioned the rest.

Anyway, I’m working harder at setting my schedule, but well, I couldn’t help all those wrenches which got thrown into the works so far this week. Maybe I should pat myself on the back for turning the time I should have been at the book scanning center into writing time.

Happy writing everyone!

To the Men in our Lives by Konnie Enos

I leave the room for just a minute to fill my water bottle knowing full well it’s almost time for the alarm to go off so I wasn’t surprised when I came back hearing it. Problem was it sounded different.

I sit down by my phone and as I’m reaching for it I realize the sounds is different because there are two phones going off.

Since I have a family of six adults living in my house we, of course, have multiple cell phones. The problem is there are only two that would be in my bed. (Mine is actually in my purse, which is on my bed.)

Now the fact the second phone is in my bed wouldn’t normally be a problem but said phone should be with its owner. My husband.

Where is my husband?

He’s somewhere between here and where our youngest daughter had to go this morning. In other words, not home.

One reason all of us have our own phones is so we can stay in contact with one another and there is safety in having access to one wherever you go. But my husband also needs one so he doesn’t get lost. Though like everything else (keys, phone, wallet, and glasses) he is constantly misplacing it or leaving it behind.

Of course there is one time we didn’t even notice he didn’t have his phone until my oldest son needed to call because he missed his bus home from school (this was a few years ago while he was still in high school). He’d called dad’s number but some gruff sounding man answered. He called twice thinking he’d misdialed the first time. Same result.

He finally called me. We were able to get him home.

He came in and asked me why a strange guy was answering dad’s phone.

That’s when we figured out my husband didn’t have his phone and wasn’t sure where it was.

I called his phone figuring if a strange guy answers I could ask him where the phone was.

Guy answers and I realize from his voice he isn’t a stranger, but he’s also not in this state. He can’t possibly have my husband’s phone. My husband had forwarded all his calls to his brother-in-law’s phone then hid his phone!

Must have taken us half an hour at least to fix the issue and locate his phone.

There are some days I have to wonder where the man’s head is because he is constantly misplacing things. I can’t tell you how many times he’s lost a pair of glasses. Once he’d just barely gotten his prescription filled and promptly lost them, never to be seen again.

I don’t know how many times he’s lost his wallet. Thankfully he has managed to find it, so far.

Most of the time I wonder if we have men in our lives to make things more difficult.

Not long ago our youngest daughter had to be somewhere and since we needed the car, someone would have to drive her. I was attempting to get dressed but my husband was talking to me. Every time I aimed for the bathroom he’d stop me again to continue the conversation.

Our daughter finally yelled at me because she was going to be late if I didn’t get dressed like five minutes ago.

I told her to yell at her dad because he wouldn’t stop talking to me and that gave me enough of a distraction to actually get to the bathroom and otherwise get ready to leave.

Then today I’m attempting to get this done before I have to get ready to leave and in comes my husband more than eager to have a nice conversation with me.

I’m glancing at the clock as it is inching closer and closer to when I have to have this posted and I have to get dressed to take middle daughter to her appointment. I don’t have a lot of time available this morning.

Husband isn’t noticing me looking at the clock.

I think I irritated him when I told him I didn’t have time to talk to him, but I’d already told him this morning I couldn’t drive youngest daughter to where she needed to be because I had to do my post. He should have realized I was busy since I was typing.

Then I think, what would we do without the men in our lives? I mean they do serve a purpose, but they either make us scream in frustration, laugh out loud or wish we’d never met them.

To all the confusing, annoying, frustrating men in your life, wish them a happy Father’s Day.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

I'm not her by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Sometimes I wish Konnie lived closer, but other times I remember what is was like when we both lived in Idaho Falls. There were a few interesting situations.

Like the time the sales clerks at the grocery store we both used were convinced one of their regular customers had two husbands right up until the time Konnie went to the grocery store, with her whole family, to do their major grocery shopping. Less than an hour later I ran into the same store alone to buy a couple gallons of milk.

We ended up using the same sales clerk to check out, and she was confused with my purchase, because she was pretty sure I bought some less than an hour earlier.

I smiled. “Tell me something, did she happen to have a very short husband with her?” She nodded, still not sure what going on.

“It wasn’t me. My husband’s a foot taller than me.”

At which point she announced to all her coworkers. “They’re twins! Its not one woman with two different husbands its two women!”

Let’s make this clear, NONE of those workers ever considered the possibility of identical twins. A female bigamist, they considered, identical twins, never crossed their minds.

Then there’s the time I was shopping in the store, using an electric cart, and a woman I didn’t know came up to me, all concerned, asking if I was okay, and wondering why I was using the cart, because I seemed perfectly fine when she’d seen earlier that day, then she mentioned the school where Konnie’s two oldest daughters were attending at the time.

“Uh, not me. But I’ll tell her high for you!”

And I think I’ve mentioned before the time in eighth grade, when a friend of mine suddenly stopped talking to me. I couldn’t figure out why so the first chance I got, I confronted him about why he no longer so much as said hi to me.

He informed me he’d said hi to me the other day in the halls and I ignored him.

“Where and when?”

“Between sixth and seventh, down by the gym.”

Well, my sixth and seventh period classes were clear on the other end of the school, which I pointed out to him. He said, “I saw you.”

“Oh, I believe you saw somebody who looked a lot like me, but strangely she wasn’t wearing what I had been wearing in our class that morning, was she?”

“Huh?”

“I’m a twin, and she has seventh period gym.”

Once when I was still in Tacoma, while Konnie was away at Ricks College in Idaho, a friend of mine and I were heading into our church to attend a dance. Well, there were several people standing just outside the entrances chatting. We didn’t know any of them, so we started to move past them toward the door.

But as I passed one of the guys grabbed my arm and said, “Don’t I know you? Weren’t you in . . .” he named a class, “at Ricks last semester?”

“No, but I’ll tell her hi for you.” I think it was actually the first time I used that statement.

I might add, my friend had never actually met Konnie, but I’d told her about her, so she knew when the guy mentioned Ricks what was going on; she had a hard time containing her glee while I explained to the fellow why the girl who had been in his class wasn’t me.

Between her giggles she said, “I know you told me about her, but I never thought . . .”

Though I’m not quite sure what she never thought because she couldn’t stop laughing long enough to spit it out. I’m telling you, every time she tried to finish her sentence, she cracked up again. I gave up. However, I think I can guess.

She never considered we were so identical that someone could mistake me for her.

Come on. People who know both of us can get us mixed up! Including our dad, who relied on our stepmother to tell us apart until we grew up and married when he told us apart by our husbands.

Which was easy because they were as different as night and day, or rather, a cat and mouse. My nearly six-foot man was Tom, and her barely 5’4” man is Jerry. Yip, that’s right, their names are Tom and Jerry. Dad got quite a few chuckles from it.

Happy writing everyone!

To Change or Not to Change by Konnie Enos

Last week my sister wrote about the title of her current WIP.

Personally, I think the title she has fits the story perfectly and her beta readers are being too nit-picky. Sometimes you have to know when not to listen to critics. And just because several people agree doesn’t mean they’re right. You also have to remember not every critic knows what they are talking about.

I left one crit group because one of them commented that I had a grammar error and every single one of the other members agreed with the problem. So did I, in fact. BUT each and every one of them completely agreed I had to end my sentence, in fact my paragraph, with a COMMA.

See the problem here.

They also refused to listen to me when I explained the actual correct punctuation for my sentence. I left the group. How can they help my writing if they don’t know you can NEVER end a sentence with a comma?

Of course that’s my experience with most of the crit groups I’ve tried. They refused to do much beyond correcting grammar and they don’t even know all the grammar rules to begin with. They most certainly can’t identify echo or redundancy, and I have my doubts about them spotting any flow issues. They also don’t understand info dumps or telling.

If they are not going to recognize their own writing blunders they certainly aren’t going to help me with mine.

So choose your critiquers carefully then take what they say with a grain of salt. Just because a beta reader says something is unclear, or has negative connotations, or is worded in a confusing way, doesn’t mean it’s so.

True if most of your critics say you have a problem there probably is one, and you should certainly verify if any comments have merit but you don’t have to take all comments as gospel.

I had one guy after listening to a reading of part of my first chapter of my opus make the comment that I should change some references to more “dog appropriate” wording since ALL my characters seemed to be a “dog like” species.

In all of my opuses over 1700 pages, I don’t have a single dog or even a “dog like” species. I do have aliens (it’s sci-fi) but the ONE species, which IS based on an animal, had CAT like features. The other alien came closer to fitting the description of a TROLL than anything else. AND most of my characters are indeed very human. ALL of my POV characters are.

I can understand how he might not have picked up on the clues I gave that one alien species had cat like rather than dog like features. I however don’t understand how he missed that most of my characters are human. They have very human names and the two supporting characters from an alien species clearly have names I created.

I got another comment from the same reading that I didn’t make it clear WHERE they were and proceeded to give me ideas how to show they were on a military base on some planet.

Sorry, no cigar.

Yes, it is a military base. Yeah, you caught that detail. Exactly where that base is isn’t a detail I feel I need to expound on in the first chapter. I don’t want info dumps giving such minute details of this world. Suffice it to say, I DO give more details as the story unfolds.

My point is sometimes comments from the critics are way off base. Either they missed an important detail or they simply weren’t paying attention. Or maybe they want unnecessary info dumps.

I know one writer who insists you have to give minute detail on what they were eating every single time they eat, even if it was just a brownie. I read her work. She didn’t just say they had brownies, she described, in minute detail, the flavors and how they were cooked!

Excuse me, I know what a brownie is. I don’t need the detail to get the picture. And she did this every time they ate. It was totally redundant and unneeded. Yes, sometimes you need that detail, but unless you’re writing a cookbook, it’s over kill to do it every single time they eat! As my sister would describe it, a wall banger.

Don’t be the writer who changed how they were writing their story because of one comment, only to have the next person make it clear they would prefer the story was written how they’d already had it.

Stay happy. Write what pleases you and cherry pick what crits you listen to. Remember they might not know wherewith they speak.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

A Rose by Any Other Name by Bonnie Le Hamilton

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. Right? And why am I asking this question?

Simple. Some of my friends in my local writing group think my title “Forbidden Connection” sounds like an erotica novel. Since my story is YA, I can’t have a title on it which is that suggestive. Back to the drawing board, title choice number five!

Any suggestions?

Needless to say, it’s the “forbidden” part that suggested bodice rippers to my friends, and “connection” is a vital part of the story.One of my friends suggested I try “Wrong Connection”, but the word “wrong” implies there is a right connection other than who Mathias connects with, which isn’t any truer than this being an erotic novel.

“Unexpected Connection” better suits the story I have started for the sequel, so I don’t want to use that this time around. Let alone that I find it disconcerting that anyone would think a title of one of my stories sounds erotic, especially since it was Konnie’s youngest daughter who came up with that title for me.

Yeah, you got it. I’m terrible at titles.

As I’ve said before I generally call a story by the main character’s name until someone suggests a better title. I have only a handful of titles I’ve come up with myself, most of mine still have the main character’s name as a title. In fact, at first, I had considered using Mathias and Mary (the two main characters) as the title of Forbidden Connection, but I prefer two-word titles, so for me that is too long. So I tried “The Outsider” but that sounds like “The Outsiders” and I didn’t want anyone to confuse my story for that one, so I tried the “The Connection” until my lovely innocent niece said “Forbidden Connection” is more evocative of what the story is about than simply “The Connection.” Evocative is right. Maybe a little too evocative.

And yeah, I know that publishers generally do change the titles, but I have to consider how any publisher, who gets my query will feel about the title it currently has. I can’t have anyone thinking I sent an erotica novel to a YA editor or publisher.

Okay, using the Thesaurus, other possible word choices instead of “Forbidden” is “Prohibited, Outlawed, or Illegal” while the only viable alternate for “Wrong” is “Unsuitable”, but I’m not at all sure which would be the best choice to rename this story.

So, I guess what I need is a poll and have everyone vote on which choice they like best. The word with the most votes wins.

Vote in the comments.

A.   Prohibited

B.   Outlawed

C.   Illegal

D.   Unsuitable

E.   You say something else

Please remember, the sequel is “Unexpected Connection”, so don’t suggest that one. And for those of you who haven’t read it, “Connection” is the most important part of the story, which is why I’m using it in the title for the sequel.

I’d give you the blurb, but I’m still working on that too.

In other words my writing group didn’t like that either, but they gave me some really good suggestions, so I think I can fix it, just haven’t had time to do it, yet, because, as I mentioned two weeks ago I got called to serve a service mission for my church. The thing is when I went to get “set apart” for that position I also received the call to be an indexing worker for the church.

That call was made official this past Sunday. So, my Sunday was pretty busy. After our meetings I had to get lunch then meet with the sister who was to train me on doing the indexing at the Family History Library, then when I was done with that, I had to go home and get dinner before I went back to the church for a missionary fireside.

Yeah, I was tired when I got home, but Monday wasn’t much better, since I had my mission work from 9 am – 1 pm and volunteering at the Pocatello Visitor’s Center from 3 – 6 pm Monday. Tuesday, I wanted to go a concert some friends of mine are in, but by the time I got home from doing mission work, I was too tired to do more than fix dinner. I missed the concert.

I’m glad the only thing I have on my calendar for today is getting this post up, because maybe I’ll be able to get some chores done, and possibly finishing a birthday present for a certain someone. 

And I’m not going to tell you what it is, because obviously, she reads my posts :D

Happy writing everyone!