Sara and Evie are off camping tonight, so Ollie and I are having a “no girls allowed” night. So far that includes steaks, soccer, and dressing up like fairies.
You know, all the things you can do when women aren’t around to judge you.
A day in the life
This is the email I sent to Sara today about how our day was going. I think it provides you with a little slice of life on a typical Friday:
from: Shane to: Sara date: Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 2:45 PM subject: what a day My oh my.
There’s tons of tie dye stuff left, you can dye to your hearts content tonight. We didn’t do any roving, and there’s that other yarn you had. I’m not so sure about the yarn we did do, so we’ll see how it comes out. I think the 3 main things are going to come out awesome though. Evie really had a good time, Ollie did too but then he got tired of it by the time we were on to socks.
There was an art festival in the park in Oak Park, so we ate lunch and then walked around there. Ollie was getting a little tired, but he had a blast in the toy store. We were there for quite a while. I was a little disappointed in their selection for kids Evie’s age. They specialize in baby toys, and then they had some science kits and stuff for older kids, but not a lot in between. Plus they’re so expensive!! There were a lot of things out of evie’s range, but I thought $25 was pretty good for a toy store! I guess not. There wasn’t really anything that I would have pushed for her to get. There were some cool things for older kids though.
Anyway, I let Evie give them the coupon and everything and they were like, “Is this for your birthday??” and made a big deal about it. So that was nice. She was really proud and she hugged her thing all the way home. She’s working on it now (it’s like a sleeping beauty book that you put sparkly stickers on…lovely, as you can imagine).
Meanwhile, Oliver took a massive smelly dump in his underwear and I had nothing else to put on him.
The end.
Ah, a beautiful day in the neighborhood!
Mr. Halbach, you talk too much
I talk too much.
I know this, because everyone all day long likes to make jokes about how much I talk. Oh, we do have a laugh, don’t we? You guys are *so funny*! Seriously though, I know I talk too much, so I try to be self-aware about it. I make an effort not to dominate conversations, but I realize that I still do it anyway. I just can’t seem to help it. I don’t think I’m one of those people who just likes to hear himself talk, but maybe everybody thinks that, even people who just like to hear themselves talk. I just get really excited about things. When you share a story, I think of a similar story that I want to tell you. When I see something funny or interesting, I want to tell you all about it. And I don’t want to leave out any of the important details along the way because that’s what makes the story so hilarious!
The thing is, I hate being trapped by people who just keep telling you stories and don’t let you escape. I hate it! But I have to seriously consider the case that I’m unwittingly doing that to other people. Furthermore, I suspect that it might not be so much of a problem at the moment (although I don’t think I’m in any position to judge that), but I worry about what it will be like when I’m older.
In fact, I even trap myself with stories sometimes. Specifically, there are times when I really want to get off the phone, but I just can’t help but add *one last story* that you made me think of…for hours at a time. There’s always one last story.
I’ve thought to myself, “Well, if you feel like you have so much to say, why not just write more blog posts? Then you can say your fill and people don’t have to get trapped by it.” It doesn’t seem to work that way. #1, there are so many more things I have to say than I have time enough to type them, #2, I realize a lot of the things I have to say are trivial and not really worth writing down, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to say them, and #3, I have to say these things when they come up, in the context of the conversation. It would make no sense to spew them out randomly on the Internet.
I don’t know, I guess it’s like a disease that I will always have my whole life, that I will always have to be mindful of. So consider this a preemptive (or belated) apology, and please find a way to let me know if I’m doing this. Sara’s not shy about letting me know (as often as possible), but she’s not always around.
Confessions of a newly minted coffee addict
For most of my life, I never drank coffee. My dad drinks the stuff like it was water (or not, because he’d never drink that much water), but I always thought it was vaguely gross. Sure, I’d have a super-triple-caramel-mocchaccino-ice-cream-chocolate-chip-madness from the local coffee shop now and again, but that hardly counts, right?
Back in 2009 we got a Keurig coffee maker, and that began the long downward slide. I liked the Keurig, but eventually the economies of volume won out: our tiny model only made one cup at a time, and it just wasn’t cutting it anymore, not to mention those little k-cups were getting expensive. Combine that with Sara’s discovery and embracing of cold brewed coffee (she has forsaken regular coffee completely), the little Keurig was sent packing after a few short years in favor of a little 4 cup pot.
Fast forward another couple of months, and I started drinking coffee at work. Just a cup at 2 or so, right when the day kind of hits that afternoon lull. It wasn’t just the caffeine though, “going to get coffee” is the social equivalent of hanging out at the water cooler, where I both find out what’s going on in the world and also get some of my best design ideas. Of course, they don’t have decaff at work or any of the nice coffee I buy myself at home, so it took some getting used to. I got used to it.
De-caffeinated coffee is more expensive than regular, so I started buying some caffeinated stuff for home and mixing it in with my decaff in the morning. I also started going on the regular “ten o’clock coffee run” for a little conversation in the morning, despite the fact that I just finished my travel mug on the way in to work. Did I mention my work coffee mug is a little bigger than a regular cup? I’m still using cream and sugar, but if I didn’t have it, I could now see myself drinking a cup anyway, something that would have been unthinkable even a year ago.
Then, the other day I was at home and I just didn’t happen to make any coffee. That night I got a terrible caffeine-withdrawal headache, which caused me to re-examine my life. I’m an addict! How did I turn into a raving coffee lunatic? Didn’t I make an effort to remove caffeine from my life once before (wow, was that really 4 years ago)?
After the day of the headache, I vowed to cut back, maybe drink more tea instead (de-caffeinated tea of course). But I haven’t. Coffee is just too dang good! And short of bringing my own coffee to work (and who wants to be that guy?) I get what I get if I go down to the pot.
So when you see me smashing a store window to steal coffee money, just remember where I started from before I turned into a wretched coffee addict.
Time to put up or shut up
Evie really loves to hear stories, and lately she has been specifically honing in on stories about us when we were kids. The other day I was telling her one of my favorite polished old chestnuts and Sara said, “That’s a really good story. You should write it in a book.”
Since then, I have been thinking a lot about trying to write something a little less “fictional”, and I have decided that it is time to take the plunge into novel territory.
If you recall, right from the very beginning, this entire short story experiment was a gateway into novel writing. A way to get my toes wet, if you will. However, there are a few particular difficulties with novel writing. The thing is, writing a novel is a huge undertaking with no guarantee that you’re actually any good at it. You can will sink massive amounts of time and effort into it, only to find out that your novel sucks and writing’s just not for you. Everybody thinks they are good enough to write a novel, but most of them (most of us) are wrong. How do I know if I’m any different? And even if it is for you, most pros and editors will tell you to just throw your first novel out and start on a second, because your first effort is never going to be any good. So my thinking on that was, if my short stories get any traction, then that will confirm that my writing is decent enough to make it worth a shot. Sort of an insurance policy against all the time I’d be committing to.
Well, that hasn’t happened yet. Although I often feel like I’m on the verge of breaking in, I definitely can’t say I’ve been officially “approved” as a good writer, since no editor has ever selected a story of mine.
Second off, I just didn’t know if I had enough time to put into a novel. A typical young adult novel is about 50,000 – 60,000 words (as opposed to 80k for adult science fiction or 100k+ for epic fantasy). I usually do about 5-6k every three months (in time to submit for Writers of the Future). So call that 1,800 words a month, and we’d be talking right around 31 months to write a typical young adult novel. (And that’s also assuming I don’t write anything else during that 2 1/2 years, which means no more short story submissions…I’m not sure if I’m ready for that! Especially when I feel like I’m so close!)
This is why I haven’t bitten off a project that big before, though I’ve always really wanted to.
So why now? Well, I’m sort of hoping that writing this novel will be something of a special case, since a) it would be personal, b) I’ve been telling a lot of those stories for years, and thus polishing them, and c) if it never sells, it won’t be time wasted, since I will still have produced something that I can share with my family.
But if I’m just writing it for my kids, then you might wonder “Why are you making it such a big project? Why does it have to be a ‘real’ book, and not just something you throw together?” Well, for a few reasons. First and foremost, if I’m going to do it, I’d want to do it right. If it’s not good enough that I would feel comfortable submitting it to someone, then why even try? I don’t want to write a crappy book, even if it’s just for my family. Especially if it is going to consume 3 years of my life. Second off, I’ve always wanted to write a book, so if I don’t try to really do this right then I still can’t say I’ve tried to write a book. I still won’t know if I can really do it or not.
Here’s the thing though: I really don’t think I could maintain working on a novel for 2 1/2 years (or 3 by the time you have re-writes, etc.) That’s just too long to put into one project without losing interest. One of the best parts of writing short stories is that if you lose interest in one story, you can always start on a fresh new idea the next day.
Long story short, if I really wanted to do it, I think I couldn’t do it at the current writing rate. I think instead what I would need to do is something drastic: no Facebook, heck, no Internet at home in the evenings, no knitting, no movie watching, no playing guitar, no accordion practice, no nothing (except stuff that needs to be done of course, like work, dishes, laundry, etc.) Basically, all free time goes towards the book. I’m going to try for a word count of 3,000 words a week (not too hefty, I know, but a *huge* increase from where I’m at right now). If I could maintain that, I could hit 55,000 words in under 5 months, sooner or later depending.
Hey, people do novels in a month during NaNoWriMo, right?
So, starting yesterday, I’m going to try super-lockdown-writing mode. I’ve already cut Twitter and Google+ and trimmed my Facebook lists and Google Reader. I’ve un-followed, un-subscribed, and de-friended everybody I possibly could (which was very, very difficult in a few cases). Doesn’t matter, time to try out being disciplined. I’m not sure yet how this will affect the blog, but I think I’m going to cut out Friday posts (they get the least amount of traffic anyway), and possibly cut another day if necessary.
I’ve got about 700 words left on my current story, which I can hopefully finish tonight, and then I’ll start in full steam on the novel. ::gulp:: Here’s hoping!
Shane Halbach 