kate rothwell

This one is frustrating, because sometimes I thought it had an agenda, leftist? oh. Maybe right wing? Huh. . . . ... And then I got a rotten score, even with my history geek boy at hand. AND WORST OF ALL, I don't know which answers I got wrong. But you go ahead, See if you can correctly answer the questions of the How Revised Is Your History? Test. And then there's the original test that led me into wasting hours on the internet and I curse whichever blog forced me to wander over to it. I found somewhere. Beth's place? I can't remember and I'm not going to go look for it. It's too late. And I got no work done and I have revisions to do. Bah. The Expatriate Achtung! You are 38% brainwashworthy, 9% antitolerant, and 14% blindly patriotic Congratulations! You are not susceptible to brainwashing, your values and cares extend beyond the borders of your own country, and your Blind Patriotism ("patriotism" for short) does not reach unhealthy levels. In German...

I just thought as I read this that if the birthday party scene had been the climax in a novel, no doubt it would be required to be gritty and at least half the characters would be bitter, estranged or mean. Instead it's just...nice. And still fun to read.** Sigh. AND I just love seeing again the fact that we can take the cards marked family and shuffled them til we're dizzy--and they still end up as family. There are still picnics and photo albums and kids. If people who loathe "alternative lifestyles" (a godawful phrase, but I don't have a better one for anyone not living in the mom-dad-jr-sis unit) could see that lesson, they'd be happier and less scared. They could get on with their own picnics and photo albums and lives instead of lying awake at night and worrying about the neighbors. On the other hand, the link might not be worth beans to you if you haven't read else's earlier blog entries. ______ ** But I know I have a penchant for the amiable.

Ebay's the best . Thank you, Aya

My friend P is in the waiting game. A parent is ill, and has been for a few years. Setbacks, recoveries, gathering the family to say goodbye, waiting, recoveries, setbacks ... hospitals, rehab, hospitals, nursing home. A couple of days ago, P went to a funeral for a friend's father and felt miserable through the whole thing. She's appalled to discover that when someone else's parent keeled over, her main emotion is envy. She sat in a crowd of weeping people and wished it was her parent in there. She said that the worst part is that she knows a lot of the desire to have it over and done with rises from pure selfishness. Not exactly a fun thing to learn about oneself. Yup, I remember wishing the process would end, and feeling guilty about the desire to have it end. Bleh. Sucks, dude. But I'm guessing it's pretty common. Now that I'm seeing someone else living it, fretting over that element in a whole tangle of emotion seems almost silly because it makes so much se...

I was going to keep on spouting more advanced POV wisdom, but I swear, I'm thinking the fewer of us who present trend as Fact the better the world will be . . .. Yeah, so a bunch of romance is written in deep third ( deeeeeeeper'n a well ) and have only the hero and heroine's POV and no head hopping blah blah blah. But hell, I'm sick of presenting it because I can imagine someone, somewhere, might jump on a new writer for some bogus rule that I repeated. A lovely bit of omniscient opinionated INTERESTING description of a room or a person will be dumped. A heroine-looking-in-the-mirror-scene-for-description that actually works (there must be some?) will be cut. Bah. When I cleaned out my office last spring, I came across a contest entry from a few years back. The judge's remarks were hellacious. Not unfriendly or rude or mean. . . but stupid. They did not fit the damn story. I can picture the judge scribbling notes about every single point some editor or writer or nu...

I'm taking a bunch of free online workshops. In past years, these have been the bee's knees. Now I'm so full of opinions that I can barely read a line of the presentation before I want to say, "now wait a moment. Where the hell did you read that rule? And what makes you think it's worth following?" I have to hit delete on various workshop emails before I write the verging-on-flame (definitely snotty) retorts. For instance.... what is this current rage for ridd ing the world of "ing" words? Hmm? Sometimes the damn words are fine. People skitter around tryi ng to avoid them and end up with long garbled sentences. Are they hop ing to avoid all forms of to be ? de"was" ing? Look ing for signs of passive voice? That it? I'd look it all up but I know it'll all end with a headache. Now I'm heading back to the old online workshops that I've saved over the years to see if I was soaking up wisdom of the ages or second-hand garble...

Thank you for pointing it out, PBW . Pat Holt's essay is wonderful-- Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See . Yeah, yeah, you've read it all before. Read it again anyway. Also from PBW-- her Top Ten Signs You've Attended Too Many Writing Workshop s (the link is at her site) This is the one I liked best: 9. Conned: The writing conferences you plan to attend in one year exceeds the number of novels you've written in your life.To grow as a writer, make a rule: for every writing conference you attend, you have to write and finish at least two new novels. Hey, if you substitute "published" for write, then I really shouldn't be in Reno anyway.