#inlocoparentis

[haleselenagomez]

We go to trial so the victim we go to trial so she can be heard #svu #inlocoparentis @therealmariskahargitay

[haleselenagomez]

And also happy #SVU Day will it be the end for Caisi when he tries to help get justice for his niece? #inlocoparentis @therealmariskahargitay @peterscanavino @kelligiddish @icet @philipwinchester

[sable-wards]

inlocoparentis replied to your post:i’m officially 24! 

Happy cake day!

thank you!

[maxbliss-blog]

Novella complete

SPOILER ALERT:

Haley has saved Morgan and captured the kidnapper. Her robot mom defeated the botnet attack and turned the Ukrainian criminal mastermind over to the NSA. Haley revealed her secret to Morgan and they kissed. At 9am 11/6/2012, I typed "THE END". With the 8700 words I wrote before NaNo began and the 16,000 words written in six days this month, I have written a novella-length story of 25,000 words! Time to open the outline for EVEN MORE LOCO PARENTIS, the second book in the trilogy, in which everyone reproduces and we meet their progeny.

[maxbliss-blog]

NaNoWriMo kickoff at Portland Airport

With more than 20 others, I began the November National Novel Writing Month at a midnight kickoff at Portland Airport.

First, I do not normally write "with abandon." I write with consideration, refinement, intent, and determination, but never with abandon. My inner editor is co-author with my writer and the editor does not countenance the stream of consciousness style of writing that NaNo encourages.

I spoke with one writer who has participated in eleven NaNo events. She said that while she easily wrote 50,000 words in November in the past, she spent eleven months re-writing what she had written to get to the final version. My inner editor was appalled. "If she had taken the trouble to write the original with more consideration, such a re-write would not have been necessary," scoffed the editor.

Nevertheless, I began to see some value in the NaNo code. I have allowed myself to play video games for hours a day instead writing. Now I have a goal of 1,667 words a day to attain and there will be no video games until those words are written. While I may not be writing with abandon, I am writing with accountability and purpose, and I am writing again!

Secondly, I am used to writing on my desktop at home and in the cloud. With my tablet and Bluetooth keyboard, I thought I was prepared to continue doing so at the airport. I was wrong. Authoring in Google Docs is not yet supported on the iPad, I learned. I could see my chapters but not add to them. So I switched to iA Writer, an acclaimed authoring app. iA Writer claims to save your writing to iCloud, but I could not discover the Save button. I did find the Send to Email button, so I saved every few minutes to my email account. 

[Update] On Nov. 2, Google released the Google Drive app for iOS, two years after releasing it for Droid. I can now edit Google Docs on my iPad. Yay!

All of this time spent fretting with new technology was time not spent writing. I left the airport with a mere 683 words written, while many participants reached their 1,667 word goal in two hours or less.

Back home at 3 am, I copied the emailed text to the cloud and gratefully returned to Google Docs. By 6 am, I had written 1,400 words with no abandon whatsoever and went to bed.

With 29 days to go, I see benefit in having a community of support and encouragement and a structure to measure my progress and commitment. I am glad to be writing again, if not with abandon, then with purpose and determination. 

[Edit: Nov. 3] With 5,485 words written, I find I have gone from writing slowly with consideration to writing smoothly with abandon. So grateful for this paradigm shift, NaNoWriMo!

[maxbliss-blog]

Our critique group infiltrated by best-selling author

I joined Genre Writers of Portlandia, a meetup group offering to critique each other's writing. Their feedback was generally positive and encouraging, so I redoubled my efforts to finish the novel.

Then, on Aug. 26, we were infiltrated by New York Times Best-Selling Author Laurie Notaro, who then wrote Word to the Wolves and sold it to the Willamette Weekly.

Brooklyn-born Laurie, who used the under-cover name of Laurie Upton, did not come to offer her advice as a best-selling author to us. Her purpose was to deride our efforts in her snarky article. She offered no constructive criticism. Her most frequent comment was "Oh," but obviously she was staying in her cloak-and-dagger role.

When WWeekly published her article, ten commenters agreed that the article was "conceited, pointless drivel" or worse. 

"This author obviously has no idea the number of groups she has insulted (writer's groups, Harry Potter fans, the millions of people who write fanfiction), and has shown zero cultural sensitivity here," wrote Tasha.

Then we learned that freelance writer for the Portland Mercury Ben Coleman wants to tell our side of the story. He has asked for our writing samples, bios, and blogs so he can present a more balanced account. He even offered to let us critique "one of my (terrible) short stories" in return.

At least in Ben's article I will appear with my name instead of being labeled as the "Man With Glasses" by Laurie Upton Notaro.

[maxbliss-blog]

In Loco Parentis cover art by Derek Murphy