Wonderful "What's That?" Wednesday Winners!

So today, my friends, we have the answer to last week's "What's That? Wednesday" game, and I have some giveaway winners to announce! Woo-hoo!

The correct answer to the mystery object is...

A deodorant protective cap!

So the first person to guess that correctly was Ms. Hartz! Let's give a big round of applause to Ms. Hartz for her awesome eyes on this one!

And for the question of what the item's alternate use in my house is, the answer is:

A cat toy! This was not, of course, by my design, but through popular demand at my house. Apparently, that little tab at the top makes it perfect for tiny furred beings to bite onto it and bring it to me, over and over and over again, for endless sessions of fetch... HARRY. (Yes, I'm talking about you.)

So that means the first person to guess the item's alternate use-- a cat toy-- is Reforming Geek! Way to go, Geek Gal! You do know your cat toys!

So each of you two nifty people will win a copy of my humorous space fantasy novel, There Goes the Galaxy. I will need you to just email me at jennthorson {at} earthlink {dot} net with your addresses and I will mail your books out to you right away.

Oh, and if anyone is interested in ordering their own copies of the book, in either paperback, for Kindle, or Nook you can do that here. They also make fun gifts for folks who like a little humor with their sci-fi. (Both Nook and Kindle versions are currently priced at $0.99, so it's easy on the wallet, too!) :

Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/There-Goes-Galaxy-Jenn-Thorson/dp/0983804508/

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/There-Goes-the-Galaxy-ebook/dp/B005M2RRRA

Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1034986423?ean=2940013437449


Thanks for playing along, everybody!

Drafting a Novel: Lessons Learned, Albatrosses Groomed and the First Day of Kindergarten

I finished the full draft of my novel last week-- that loose-leaf albatross that's kept me company for many months, hanging around my neck and weighing heavily on my mind.

And now that I've shed it, and started the serious Albatross Grooming Process we call "Editing Like Ya Mean It," I thought I'd share a few favorite things I learned along the way.


Everyone you know is also writing a book...
Or has a Best-Selling Idea for a book...

Or has been thinking they might think about writing their memoirs of that one wacky time in college with the thing and the stuff.

It's pretty cool to learn that the only thing holding 75% of our populace back from winning the Pulitzer Prize for literature-- or kicking Dan Brown's symbolically-coded butt off the NYTimes list-- is that this material just hasn't been committed to paper yet.

So be prepared that when folks ask where you've been hiding yourself away lately, and you mention the novel, everyone from your cousin to your mail carrier will reveal themselves to be the next Rowlingpalinclancykerouac.

Thankfully, there is room for everyone.


You'll start rewriting history for your characters, like you were PR for a political candidate. With the whole book together, you start to see scenes where your character is saying and doing things he never would have done once you actually got to know him, on page 521. Maybe it was the day you drank too much coffee. Or weren't feeling the motivation. Or you were distracted by... oh... a really noisy SunChip bag.

So you sit your character down and tell him, "No, you didn't say that. You said this. This is more you." He might recall very well having once held strong opinions on migrant workers or a new ketchup bottle, and now it's wiped away.

But like in politics, soon with careful attention, spin, and the Wonders of Word Processing, you'll make him forget-- as if it never was. There might only be some lingering discomfort.


There is a special panicky moment when you realize someone might read what you've written.
Talking about the writing process is always fun. It's safe. It's intangible. "It's a work-in-progress," you say fleet-footedly. "It's too soon."

You can stall so nicely with vagaries to the point your material gains in Fabulousness an amount inversely proportionate to the quantity of people who never, ever see it.

But once the novel's actually done, and all your friends have been hearing the blah-blah about it for years, suddenly they get this idea they might want to...oh, I dunno... read it.

And it turns into the first day of kindergarten for your novel. As in, you know very well the novel might still pick its nose in public and may not always use its Indoor Voice. But you have to let go sometime, right?


You begin creating elaborate scenarios of how people will misread what you've written.
The less you describe, the more readers will grab onto what you did say and try to interpret it their own way. And you start to worry your demure heroine will become rumored to be a crack-smoking Lady of the Evening with narcolepsy. And her dog will suddenly become symbolic of her desperate need for control in a male-dominated society.

You envision your simple childrens book about a squirrel who forgot where he buried his nuts will become your personal treatise about the nation's hoarding problem.

Once it's on paper and before eyeballs, it's out of your control.


You realize you've been on a Manuscript One-Arm Strength Training Program, from carrying 500+ page double-spaced draft everywhere you go.
Fifty pounds of dog kibble will seem like cotton swabs to your mighty physical power now.


You will have to boil down years' worth of blood, sweat, snot and brain oozage into a few heart-pounding, eye-popping, irresistable sentences if any agents or editors are ever going to pay attention to it. The giant stack of manuscript pages will seem like a happy day at the beach compared to this. It's fitting War and Peace on a fortune cookie. And you don't get room for that nifty Chinese Word of the Day either.


No one will understand why it's taken you so long to write the damned thing, because, heck, James Caan only spent a few weeks writing that whole Misery Chastaine novel-- his best one ever-- and he even spent half his day trying to break out of Kathy Bates' house.

Humor Blog News, Brain Dissection, and Mom Turns Japanese Chef

Happy Friday, Friends o' Cabbages!-- (or Happy Whenever You're Reading This; let's not be Day Discriminatory)--

To start today's bloggy humorificness, I first have a happy bit of business I want to share.

It appears for the last two years, my brain has been partitioned into many sections. There is:

• The Cabbagulum Obligata-- The part of the brain that plans Of Cabbages and Kings humor posts. It keeps track of, and writes up, blogly humor three times a week on a fairly rigid, entirely self-dictated schedule
  

• The Thriftus Packratocio-- The section that controls me picking up weird crap from thrift stores and writing about that two times a week for my other blog on an equally rigid, self-imposed schedule because, apparently, I am my own personal fascist dictator
  

• The Instantaneous Deadlinula NowNowNowus- The area which handles all the last-minute work writing panics and customer service tasks that inevitably crop-up, drawing energy away from sections one and two

• The Novelium Guilticanus- The part of the brain that pushes me to finish the humor space adventure novel I've been writing, knowing full-well it's a pretty fun tale and will, at least, be better in someone's hands than in a drawer. It's the part of the noggin that says once you have a back-breaking 363 manuscript pages and a complete outline, you are a stupid, lazy bugger if you don't finish the rest of the tale. Then it chains you to your computer desk and serves you bread and water until you crack.
  

• The Novelium Procrastinatorius- The part of the brain that assesses the other parts of the brain and determines that, yes, I can actually put off finishing my novel for another year, even though I enjoy the project, don't have much more to write, and know I need to get my posterior in gearior.

• Steve- The part of the brain that has no idea what all the hustle-bustle is about in the other Brain Locales, and really would prefer to just turn off, chill out and watch some Netflix with a beer. Steve lives in a jar on my endtable.
  

So, with all of these brain parts vying for attention, it occurred to me that I could eliminate the Novelium Procrastinatorius once and for all-- and truly concentrate on the frigging novel using an attention span slightly longer than your average fruit fly-- if only I had a few less blog posts to write a week.

That said, Cabbages will now be published once a week-- I'm thinking Tuesdays, but am open to suggestions taking into account Readers' personal convenience-- until I get this novel wrapped up. I imagine, it'll be the summer.

The good news here is, having freed up this bit of space in the brain (which is dusty and still full of clutter and probably needs Clean House to stop by), I have already written up about 20 new pages of novel content, and am pleased with the progress so far.

In some ways, I feel like I'm copping out in not being able to balance it all in quantity. But that's probably just the Cabbagulum Obligata speaking.

________________________________________________

In other completely different news-- like the actual press-- I just read that a Japanese restaurant in Australia-- called Wafu-- has ruled that all guests must finish everything on their plates under threat of a penalty fee. Those that waste food will be asked to never darken the restaurant's door again.

Future restaurant policies under evaluation include making patrons sit in the corner for not putting their napkins in their lap, and having them write, "I will use my salad fork for salad only" 100 times as punishment for rampant utensil misuse.

Okay, so I made those last two up. But I did have to double-check that my mother wasn't actually still alive and just hiding these past twelve years as a Japanese chef in Australia.

I recall vividly having a Battle of Good Versus Evil with Mom about mashed potato consumption, as a child.

Our War of Wills led me to sit at the kitchen table until bedtime, with a plate of potatoes before me reminiscent of a particularly memorable scene in Close Encounters.

We also enjoyed a sequel the next evening, featuring the very same all-spud cast.

Mom would totally have been on board with the idea of a wasted food fine. Docking, I dunno, ten cents out of my 50 cent per week allowance for doing the dishes for each potato glob left behind would have definitely had an appeal to her.

Food for thought for you parents with fussy eaters out there! :)

Anyway, that about wraps up Cabbages for today. Hope all the parts of your brains are currently hanging out, having a blast and ready to party for the weekend.

If so, can I send Steve along? His schedule's free and he'll bring beer.

Bringing Back the Fiction Character Draft

It's been like that drawing of the Evolution of Man...

Except instead of hairy, slope-browed knuckle-draggers transforming image-by-image into a Hip, Modern Nudist...

Now it's more like a two-dimensional archetype with poorly-executed slapstick sensibilities changing slowly into a competent lead character who surprises me occasionally and annoys me little.

As far as writing goes, I'd call it a minor success.

What I'm talking about is the evolution of the lead character in the novel I've been working on. I've almost completely drafted this thing three times since college. And as I slide into the home stretch of Draft Three, I have to wonder:

What will become of all the characters I changed, zapped from the plotline, and offed with, y'know killing and future non-life?

I can just see bringing my lead character, in his many iterations, into my office and sitting them down.

"Look, guys, I've called you all here because we need to talk.

"We've shared a lot over the years. Spent long hours working things out. We had our rough patches. But we've had some good times, too.

"As time has gone on, however, the plot has changed, and we have had to change with it.

"As you probably know, the book is almost finished. And I think this draft, with some minor tweaking is, well, this is 'It.' The Keeper. And our friend Lead Character Three, here, he's really getting the job done. He's got layers. He's put up with all the crap I've thrown at him. And he's holding his own. I'm proud of him.

"So, Two... One... I do appreciate all the time and effort you've put into this project. I couldn't have done it without you. We never would have gotten where we are today...

"...But I'm afraid I no longer have need for your services. I might eventually re-purpose parts of you for other, more minor characters in future works. But for now, it really looks like Three and I will be moving forward into any sequels."

Here One probably shrieks in melodramatic grief, while Two has a panic attack, gets on his knees, seizes my hand and begs me to reconsider. "But-- but-- Where do we go now? We have nothing! This storyline was our lives!"

"Er, Two, it's this sort of one-note, high-strung behavior that encouraged me to take another direction in the first place," I tell him.

"It's all so futile! So disappointing! So--"

Eventually, I'd have to write them into a nice spa in the country. One of those Victorian-style high-end hospitals, where the nervous and afflicted can go to recuperate. Given the way I rewrite, I imagine the place would soon be packed.

"Hi, remember me? I was the female lead from Draft One," a woman with over-sized spectacles and a fluffy white bathrobe would say, extending her hand in greeting. "The author decided I was too circa late 80s early 90s, and my analytical personality lacked potential reader connection. While at times my stoicism was whimsical, overall it left very little opportunity for growth."

"Sure, I remember you!" Lead Character One tells her, his face breaking into a smile. "I never could understand why she didn't include you in Draft Two."

"Oh, she drafted some fiesty, more down-to-earth female she felt she and today's readers could better identify with."

"How horrible!" One gasps.

"Could be worse," she tells him, waving it away. "I could have been Minor Support Characters One to 22. They're here, too."

"I haven't noticed them," says One, looking around dramatically, as if they might show up at any moment.

"And you won't. They fade into the background unless they're needed. We'll only see them if anyone needs integral comments that further the daily plot. Otherwise, they're completely invisible."

"Oh my gosh, no! Really?" asks One, eyes wide with shock.

Draft One Female Lead shrugs. "If one of them does a good enough, stand-out job, they might get a cameo later on. You never know."

One still looks horrified. He'd spent most of the first draft in the same way. It had to have been exhausting.

"Well, off for my mud mask. No reason not to keep trying to look my best. You never know when you might be needed again." The former Female Lead turns on a heel. "Oh, but One?... I don't know if you've taken a walk around the whole grounds yet, but... I don't advise it."

"What? Why?"

"Well, there's just the graveyard... the character reshaping wing... The plot chopper... Trust me. You're not up for it."

"NOOOOOOOOO!" shrieks One, extending his gaze to the heavens.

Unfortunately, not all characters can be rehabilitated.

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Have you ever written something, thought it was okay, and then later wondered-- what the heck were you thinking?