Author Archives: LAL

London: My Top 5 Places To See

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In January, I opted to go to London for my birthday. I hadn’t been to London in over 20 years. So I spent the week in this fabulous city being a geek, gawky tourist.

Like most vacations, it’s impossible to do everything in one week. But with some planning (thanks to my local friends who gave us great advice) and some flexibility, we saw a lot.

I also recommend going in the off-season. I got a lot of cocked eye-brow looks and questions when I announced I was going to London . . . in January. But let me tell you, January was the best time to go. We dealt with minimal crowds and no lines. Yes, we wore winter coats, scarves, and sometimes hats. But the weather actually wasn’t that bad. And more importantly, no lines (or queues as they say in the UK).

So without further ado, here are my top 5 must-see things in London.

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Thoughts On the New Year (Or Why I Don’t Make Resolutions)

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In the days leading up to and immediately preceding the New Year, everyone talks about making resolutions, choosing words of the year, or setting goals. For the past three days, I feel I’ve been bombard with questions like “What are your resolutions?” “What’s your word of the year?” “What are your goals for 2020?”

ENOUGH!

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Merry Christmas Eve

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Can you believe another year is almost over? And what a year it has been.

Last Christmas saw the beginning of the longest federal government furlough. I sat at home all through January wondering when the stalemate would end and I could go back to work. And stressed wondering whether we’d be paid for the time.

February saw me packing and planning my third cross-country move. I narrowly missed a winter storm system as I drove and arrived in Washington to a couple feet of snow.

March blurred into April and then May as I traveled for conferences and tried to learn my new job.

Summer arrived in the Pacific Northwest and I explored the beauty of nature and all the hiking.

Before I knew it, fall arrived and the days stayed sunny and warm. But slowly the nights got longer and the days shorter. I failed at NaNoWriMo and a short story writing competition, but had a blast with new friends.

And now the Christmas holiday season is here again. A full turn around the sun. And I’m looking forward to a birthday vacation with some dear friends in January and some amazing new adventures in twenty-twenty.

But on this Christmas Eve, I stop to be in the moment. I pause to be grateful for all that I have, thankful for the love of family and friends, and blessed by it all.

Merry Christmas to you. May your days be merry and bright. And may your holidays be filled with love and laughter.

peace & joy,

My Mega-Fail Moment

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Remember a few days ago I posted about my flash of inspiration? And how I went from opting not to do NaNoWriMo this year to being geared up for it? (If not, then read this.)

Yeah, well welcome to my mega-fail moment.

Somehow the inspired first sentence, the one I sped walked home repeating to myself over and over again so I could get it down, has disappeared.

That’s right. Gone. Missing. MIA. No more.

I’ve searched every folder on my computer the past two days and nada.

Nothing.

Zilch.

It’s just gone. Vanished. *poof*

There are those of you who might tell me to put on my big girl pants and just write anyway. Trust me. I’ve tried. While I remember the gist of the sentence, I can’t remember exactly what I wrote. And nothing I’ve tried to come up with since has the same feel as the original inspired sentence.

Let me put it another way.

I’ve tried to write another first sentence, but that’s as far as I get. The rest is just blank. When I came up with the missing sentence, I saw the characters, the story line, the action.

See the difference?

(This might make more sense if you could see inside my head. Then again, that might be too scary of a place for you non-introverts.)

And so I’m back to where I was pre-inspiration. le sigh

So lesson learned kiddos. Always make a back-up. And in my case, in the future, I’ll be making a back-up of my back-up.

For those keeping track, I’m now 5,001 words behind schedule. (Or 4,678 if I count this blog post.) So far, 2019 is not shaping up to be the best NaNoWriMo year.

If you happen to have some spare inspiration, send it my way. Or better yet, if you’re a computer genius, help me find my missing file. In the meantime, I’ll be sitting over in the corner grumpy and despondent.

(Almost) Failed to Start

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We are days away from November 1. You know what that means . . . it’s (almost) time for

NaNoWriMo!

Since 2008, I have annually participated in National Novel Writing Month. Every year I make a valiant effort and usually get a few good blog posts out of the process even though I don’t always “win” (i.e., write 50,000 words). Check out a few of my previous NaNoWriMo posts here, here, and here.

But this year I (almost) decided not to participate.

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Writing Challenge: Round 2

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If you’ve been keeping up with my writing challenge updates, you know that I got the results of my NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge Round 1 story on Wednesday and then feedback from the judges on Thursday. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go read this and this first.)

Round 2 then started at midnight EDT Saturday when I received the email informing me of my next assigned genre, location, and item.

(The nice thing about living on the west coast is that email arrived 9pm my time, so I had several hours to think about it before heading to bed.)

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Writing Challenge: Receiving Feedback

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The results came in for the first round of NYC Midnight’s Flash Fiction Challenge 2019. (Catch up on my writing adventure here.) But in short, writers have 48 hours to write a maximum 1000-word story in a specific-assigned genre.

Yep, 1000 words. 48-hours.

And can you believe NYC Midnight does a micro-fiction contest where the word limit is 250?

Me neither. Needless to say, I’m not signing up for that one.

While I didn’t expect to place in a writing challenge where 3,500+ writers enter, I had at least hoped to at least make it into the bottom 10-15. But sadly, not to be. Needless to say, I’m still disappointed.

NYC Midnight also sent us feedback from the judges (via email). I received feedback from 3 anonymous judges that included both what they liked and what they thought needed work.

Overall, the feedback I received is good. Feedback is always a bit of a tough pill to swallow, particularly when you’ve worked hard to create something. Luckily, I’ve had enough experience now and some excellent mentors who have helped me learn to accept feedback.

For me, I’ve found it’s a two-step process to deal with feedback.

First, I have to get out of my own way. I have to take a deep breath and realize that feedback (and I’m speaking of constructive feedback here) is not a personal attack. It’s not a comment on my person and that I’m still awesome no matter what.

I’ll stop here to say that if you ever receive “feedback” that personally attacks you, says some derogatory about you, or insults you on a personal level, then that’s not feedback. That’s just unacceptable rudeness masquerading as feedback. And you shouldn’t take it.

But I digress.

Second, I have to look at the feedback with a critical eye. Just because someone gave feedback, even if it’s valid feedback, it doesn’t mean I must follow it.

But this is where it gets tricky.

In order to judge the feedback, I have to be honest with myself. I have to look at my product (in this case my short story) and honestly evaluate it with a critical eye, as if I were reading it for the first time. In this case, it helps that I haven’t looked at the story since I submitted it.

Once I got out of my own way (I may have had a little pity party when I read the results), I took a deep breath and with fresh eyes re-read my story and the feedback. More tweaking, a little tightening, a bit more explanation and maybe I would have made the top 15 in my group.

All things I will keep in mind for the next round. Because at the end of the day, that’s what feedback should do—make you a better writer (or artist or musician or electrical engineer or whatever).

But while I felt I received overall great feedback, I’m not necessarily going to use all of it. For example, here are two snippets from the feedback I received:

I would generally advise against using all caps for sound effects – find other ways to get these across.

Tighten the dream sequence. Use it to clarify: why would mercenaries be after her and Mark? Let that fear percolate and color her dream.

Both provide valid feedback. But I view the first one (against using all caps) as more subjective. How many times have you read a story where a sound effect was all caps? Or italicized? Or some other kind of font stylization? While this is valid feedback, it addresses style rather than substance. Where one person dislikes all caps for sound effects, another reader will not see any problem with it.

And really, at the end of the day, all caps versus not all caps is minor point. It won’t help make the story stronger. It wouldn’t have propelled me into the top 15 (I wouldn’t think).

In comparison, the second one provides specific feedback going to the substance of the story. It identifies a weakness in the story and provides me something to consider to make the story stronger. For me, that’s constructive feedback—it’s specific and useful.

Now I still get to go on to Round 2 (which starts at midnight EDT tonight). Everyone who entered gets to do Round 2. But the odds of me making it to Round 3 are rather low at this point since I’m going into Round 2 with 0 points.

But that’s okay for several reasons. First, I actually took a chance and entered and most importantly, submitted a story. I consider that a huge win for me.

Second, I’m actually pretty happy with the story I wrote. The genre was completely out of my comfort zone. I’m not a thriller writer. I don’t even usually read thrillers. So the fact that I wrote a thriller short story (in less than 48 hours) is a win for me.

Third, I completely acknowledge the story is what I’d call a second draft. It’s a bit more than a rough draft, but it really did need someone else to read it and point out the flaws. It would’ve been nice had I been able to have someone else read it and provide that feedback before I had to submit it, but like I said upbove, I will definitely internalize the feedback to make my Round 2 entry stronger.

I won’t know until midnight EDT tonight (9pm for us west coasters) what my Round 2 assigned genre, location, and item are. Let’s hope I get a genre I’m much more comfortable with. Fingers crossed!