I couldn't get a good haiku in the few tries of this widget. Then I tried one for Damon. His was awesome on the first attempt.

Haiku2 for gooddamon
year old children of today who see nothing wrong with unfettered
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Created by Grahame

Beatrix has really changed since last Christmas.
Then she was a little baby.

She couldn't really walk or talk. She took it all in wide eyed.

Here she is now:

Running, talking, wily, and wildly exploring the world.

She interacted with the toys she was given today in ways even I didn't expect. She showed new dexterity building with the blocks, and made up little scenes and interactions with the cloth doll-house of bunny-people.

We had a lovely little Christmas here. It left my imagining the pleasures of next year.

My dad just took Beatrix with him to the store because my dad is awesome.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to brag because that's what parents do.

Beatrix has developed a knack now for memorization. She reads her favorite books to herself, repeating what's on the pages or just talking about the pictures. She has Dozens of favorite books and asks for them by name -- their proper names or names she makes up for them.

Over thanksgiving weekend she learned to say her ABC's all the way through. Since then, when the mood is right, she'll recite her numbers to twelve. It's not really counting yet, but soon. She has started to count objects up to three -- maybe four.

Here's a picture of her singing the alphabet for her aunt Noni.





Beatrix is almost twenty-one months now, and beautiful. She loves trucks, grover, ratting-egg-things, and the moon. She takes good care of her dolls; tucking them in, changing their diapers and feeding them crackers and juice. She likes to brush her own teeth and wash her hands. She likes to watch the fire and likes music. She asks for songs by name as well.

Her current favorites are Beach Boys, Little Deuce Coope; Octopus Garden by the Beatles, Love to be Silly by Cat Power and an inappropriately Kill-Bill type number called Chick Habit by April March.

She's such an aware vibrant, talkative person. I'm looking forward to her first real Christmas. It'll be such a surprise for her.

And the weather station thinks it'll snow tonight. Her first snow since she could walk. Life is full wonder when you're adventurous and not-quite-two.

I'm two thousand words away from winning Nanowrimo. I'm going to do this thing.

Of my three nanowrimo works this one is the most like a real novel. It has character arc, plot arc, themes and form.

Maybe, in these crazy years, I've learned something.

Damon's parents threw a grand Thanksgiving feast this year. Over twenty people, most of them our family, ranged and gathered in the living room, kitchen and beautiful backyard yurt. Lottsa food. Lottsa love. Lottsa food made with love.

Last night I had grand-chef selkith over to make lemon-rhubarb cranberry sauce. She boiled cinnamon sticks and real vanilla beans in it. It was amazing.

I made a creamy pumpkin curry and very carefully baked a pumpkin to put it in. I'm really pleased with how it came out; rich and spicy and, as my sister said, "like something from a cooking magazine."

Today, Damon took pictures of us being goofy at the park.



Below, Bee and I are talking about the river. She's reached full conversation level. Many of her sentences start with "anna" meaning "and a" or "and the." Her structure is very good for one-anna-half.

A sample from today:
"Anna tree, inna water, going swiming wiff a duck. Mommy, anna Bee-tis not going swimming."

To me, in context, it made perfect sense.



It was just about the coldest afternoon this year. Check out our matching pink noses.

Hope your day was, or will be, rosy.

I thought I'd share a picture of both my  writing computer and drug of choice:



 Fancy.

That machine is a Olpc which I think is a fine little machine, even if it's not for everyone.  Next to it sits the crown-jeweled queen of all lattes; the salted caramel latte from Cafe Marche. The presence of this partiularly glorious drink means I took the picture while writing at the Fifth Street Market downtown. It's a nice bricky old building with lots of light and a train tracks outside the north windows. There, evey fifteen minutes or so, a train drifts by clanking and lowing its horn. That perks me right up.

I'm still keeping up with Nanowrimo. The first week was easy as I endlessly introduced important characters doing interesting things.  In week two I had to bring them together. They had to talk and do story things and get moving. Awkward. I spent most of the week at least a thousand words behind on word count.

Fortunately, I have now discovered the lay of the plot. Things are rolling.  I'm about to write a  shoot-out scene . I've never done that before. Thought it's not a shoot-out in the western or action movie sense, I'm still looking for ward to it.

Tonight: BANG BANG BANG, and the survivors run for cover.

In my last real post I said I've been able to return to writing. Now I can say with confidence that the difference between now and a couple month ago is amazing. It's really been a zero-to-sixty change.

There's been a grand convergence of Beatrix accepting other caretakers, those caretakers being available and small but exhausting issues drying up and blowing away like summer seeds.

I feel really good right now.

I started Nanowrimo last week, just to see what I could do. Damon and I both did. I wasn't really expecting to keep up, but even the attempt has always been very good for me. To my surprise, I kept up easily the first few days. Then I flagged a bit as I tried to figure out where I was going, but then picked right back up this weekend.

What I'm writing may not be readable, but the words are mine and there's lots of them.

Over the years Nanowrimo has allowed me learn things I'd otherwise be to wrapped up in "writing good" or "finishing stories" to explore. In the end I end up knowing a lot more, even about writing good finished works.

I can't keep this pace up. I'm neglecting a few things and eating too much junk. Fortunately, some things can be put off and I haven't let Beatrix's diet stray into junk -- and this commitment has helped me.

Maybe I'll never touch the novels I've written again, but they're wonderful nonetheless. In December I hope to start submitting work again and to work on my backlog of first drafts.

Life, however, is life and we'll just see.

This unrelated picture brought to you by HILT*





*The Hyper-Intelligent League of Tigers

I've been away a long time. You wouldn't believe how many blog posts I've written in my head over the last year. Sometimes it helped my clarify my thoughts. There were still so many moments I wish I could have written down in order to hold them forever. Dated, posted and pressed in a flower book.

Maybe now I can. Damon and I have worked it out so that I have late evenings to myself. I'm not getting quite enough sleep, but that's life.

The short version of why I have been off-line is that Beatrix hates it when I type. It's understandable, I bet I really disengage from her.

She developed a sixth sense for the tap of keys. I'd get halfway into the first sentence of an important email and she'd rush up to cling to my knees. Then she'd switch back between asking me to do something -anything- else and sneaking her hand up to pound on keys herself.

I decided the war between baby and writing would not be won on this front. I had to strategically retreat from typing in her presence.

Though I've never lost it entirely, writing has been the hardest sacrifice. Even so, I'm loving Motherhood.

But that's a topic for another day.

It's hard to believe that the last time I did a big Beatrix photo post was September. Time has flown by.


Beatrix is ten months old. Soon I'll have a year-old child.


Here she is being a banana scientist.


( Our winter. Much cute. You know you want to see it.  )

This is a surprisingly useful  list.

Beatrix is so awesome.

I can't believe it's been months since I've written this down.

So. Awesome.

She's been very physical and independent. Lately, she's happy playing on the floor and singing out babble-talk to the world.

A few weeks ago she started to do this Quasimodo scooching crawl with one knee up and her foot on tiptoe. She never got far but was pleased with herself. Smug, even.

Last week she mastered the two-knees-down technique. Yesterday she crawled all the way across the room to get at the tiles I've been putting in.

She's wanted Damon and me close, perhaps as a response to her new independence. She needs to know that crossing the room wont misplace her parents, but even with this sudden cling, I've really gained some new freedoms.

The writing feels real again. Not toe-in dabbling, but real storytelling work with all its joys and frustrations.

I think for the next year or so I'm going to work on producing good things quickly -- or, more accurately, finding my optimal speed. In writing, there are certain points in the work where I need to keep my pace up or I'll loose the thread of the plot -- I get bogged. A similar thing happens in editing. If I push too hard at some things I work them away to nothing.

There are other times I do need to go slow for best results. Refining this process will be vital in the next few years. Beatrix will help me. She's my uncompromising Olympic coach.

"All right Mom. You have ten hours this month to write and revise. Go!"

My story The Buried Years is online at Clarkesworld Magazine. It's short. You should read it right now.

Also, the art is creepy-good. Now I want to tell that story.

So I made 30,000 words. It wasn't easy and
I had to use my Crystal Sword of Badwriting, but I did it.

And, just as I have every year, I learned something I didn't expect. I thought I had a problem with endings, but I've discovered that's not quite right.

For a long time I've been writing these killer openings; the tension builds, the stakes rise, the plot thickens and then and then ...

Nothing. Threads unspool, characters mutter apologies to me and wander off.

So for this Nanowrimo story I said “okay, I'm not 100% sure how this all comes out so I'll write a few possible endings to figure out where I'm headed.“

So I wrote one. I wrote two. I wrote a dozen. It was great. I figured a lot out about who these people where and what they were doing. I had several options for what might become of them. And it felt easy - familiarly easy. I've done this before.

And I realized that I don't have any special problem with the last pages of my story. They are tough but no tougher than anything else. Bringing a story in for a landing is not the hardest thing.

It's the zenith of my story is where I feel things fall down. Instead of rising to a roaring apex they just sort of shlumph over.

In the story I was working on I had the nebulous idea of a conflict involving characters at extreme odds – there was a pistol, a shotgun and a race against time to rescues (or steal) a dieing doll while fixing generator and preserving selves from worm-like deadly clouds.

Excitement and conflict! Death everywhere!

But my previously forward-moving characters wanted to stop and chat about their backgrounds, motivations and the socio-political problems.

This would be fine for speed- writing a first draft if I could get them to the shooting and the fighting eventually. Taking the conflict to whatever ultimate level the story needs.

I think that many of these faults come from my writing strengths. I'm good at hooking in tension – making simple scenes seem dramatic. I'm good at making all the characters have some reader sympathy. They're real – and their realness gives them the possibility to be reasonable. Reasonable and shootouts don't mix.

Fortunately for me, the more well drawn a character the more reason they have to be irrational. I just need to hone that to an edge.

It's not that I've never written a work that cuts like this, but most are rounded things. I want the power to write stories that stab into the sky. That come to satisfying sharp icy Everest heights. I want my readers to bring an oxygen tank and to cut their gloves on the stones at the top. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna get good at this.

The goal is five thousand words this month.

I've been working hard to find writing time but I not letting it stress me. That is a great thing about how Nanowrimo almost a game. I've discovered that late-night after a day of baby-care doesn't work well for me.

I've discovered that time can be pressed, squeaking and protesting, into an average day. Also: Damon is a saint among baby-daddies.
 
For a while I was keeping up nicely with the Nanowrimo one-thousand six hundred six words a day. Eventually life tripped me an I had some low-or-no word count stretches that I haven't been able to do much catch up from. Some days I squeeze in two thousand words, but not often.

So right now we're at the last week and I'm about ten-thousand words behind.

In other words: I. Am. Awesome.

I've averaged a thousand words a day this month. I'm really getting the habit of it. I'm improving my speed, and I like a lot of what I've put down.

I still have this vague, lottery-player hope that I'll somehow double my speed over the next week and  I'll  "win" Nanowrimo by reaching that fifty-thousand word goal.

Hope and pressure make my fingers dance on the keyboard -- but winning this one is really not the point.

I'm now part of a review site! Presenting Pixielate. Here's my first review: The Bartimaeus trilogy.

It has been put together by the inestimable* divadrummer.

This makes me particularly happy, because I now have the extra excuse I need to read the books that really, really catch my eye. I've gone a couple years now primarily reading what was lying around, what was cheap and what people lent me.

Nothing wrong with this, really, but it's no way to go through life.

So I was grateful for the opportunity to join this crack teem of opinionated volunteers. I started by liberating The City of Saints and Madmen from the library. Rumors of this book have intrigued me for a while, and I'm glad I've finally read it. I haven't reviewed it yet, I went for something easier.

But for loyal fans (Hi Mom!) here's my mostly-unhelpful one-sentence review:




*No really, don't even try to estimate her. I'm serious.