Infestation

In a few hours, I'm going to have about eight little boys in my house. I have way too much to do to finish getting ready. So what am I going to do about it?

Procrastinate.

Some people love their kids' birthday parties. They choose some cutesy theme and get way into it. They stay up multiple nights, sewing elaborate decorations and buying fondant to decorate that cake just so.

Now, if you know me at all, you'd think I'm the creative type. I sew, I write, I play the flute. But guess what? When it comes to the domestic arts, I'm a few cupcakes short of adorable.

Take the cake, for instance. L. wanted a Lego theme party, so I thought I'd make him a Lego cake. No problem. Just bake a flat cake, and then bake some mini-cupcakes and turn them upside down for the connectors.

Well, it ended up looking like a flat cake with meatballs on top.


FAIL! I also made Rice Krispie treat Legos. Sort of. I tried to fill up some water balloons and I ended up with sore fingers and broken balloons (note to self for next year: cheap water balloons are just that--cheap).

Then, for my most brilliant move, I took the younger kids with me to buy L's presents. They got home and told him exactly what he was getting.

This is going to damage my can-do attitude. With domestic diva crossed off my list, my to-do list has shrunk. Maybe when the party's over, I'll get real crazy and put sleeping back on there.

Take a listen!

Announcing...Flautissimo's 2011 spring concert, for those of you who missed it (I think that would be ALL of you who are reading this), for your listening pleasure, at my blog, www.kaylieblog.blogspot.com. It's on the sidebar at the right. Just click, play, and listen. Please. 'Cause it took me about an hour to convert all those files and upload them. Then tell me how great is sounds so I know all my hard work is not in vain.

Old Trauma Time

Sometimes, when you're writing (especially if you're writing about teenagers and/or the place where you grew up), you have to write about something that hits close to home, something that brings back less than pleasant memories.

Here are some of mine, all in one big yellow package:
Photo credit

Maybe some of you city dwellers never had to deal with one of these on a regular basis. But I did, nearly every day.

When I was little, I remember being so, so scared to cross the busy highway after I got off the bus. For a long time, I needed a big kid helper. I remember being terrified that my bus driver, Lorna, would yell at me for doing it wrong.

Then, when I got older, it got even scarier. When you're one of the last people to get on the bus, you don't get many choices about where you sit. And if you're not the popular type, your bus seat status might be less than stellar. People might even refuse to sit by you. So then you have to walk up and down, back and forth, hoping somebody will let you in. Maybe one of the little kids. And then the bus driver has to yell back at all the bus people for someone to let you sit with them.

When you finally sit down, you wait for either someone to find something nasty to say about you, or for the other person to let you know they're not going to talk to you so you'll have to ride the whole way to school in silence, and you're not sure if this is better or worse than what they might say if they spoke to you.

But the thing that makes a school bus worse than a school cafeteria is that whatever people say, they have a built-in audience. Including you. Even if you're not sitting directly beside the mean ones, you're going to hear every insult, and so will everyone else.

Traumatic, you think? Sure, but it's great novel-writing material. And the best part is, my characters get to rise above those mean nasty bus-riding bullies. They can tell them off in a way I never could. That's why the pen is mightier than the sword. It can slay a whole busload of rude, self-absorbed meanies in a single stroke. That school bus is going down, baby.

Note to self: Stuff not to write

Here are some plots I've been reading a little too much of lately:

1. The angsty teen. This girl/guy is way messed up. He/she is in major self-destruct mode. This person is on drugs/ driving drunk/ flunking school/ suicidal or all of the above, messed up because they want to die. Death seems like a picnic compared to their life, which is filled with backstabbing friends, an abusive relationship, clueless teachers, and screwed-up parents. But wait, it gets worse. The real reason our hero hopes to meet death in a dark alley is because....

2. Teen thinks he/she is responsible for someone else's death. Yup, there was a terrible accident. Lost soul-type friend/ innocent little sibling/ perfect parent would still be alive if our hero hadn't failed to save the day. He/ she is guilty of Being in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time. Except, of course, it wasn't really our hero's fault. But since our hero doesn't have a time travel machine to go back and fix things, he/she is buried under a mountain of guilt, but puts on a brave face and rebuffs everyone who tries to break through said Brave Face. Everyone, that is, except for...

3. The tortured relationship that will eventually end in bliss. Hero and love interest meet, and ka-pow! They are struck by the amazing insight that Hot Girl/ Boy is, though perhaps a little quirky, awesome--unlike everyone else at Rich Snob High. But alas, the First Twist happens as Love Interest hugs another person! Oh, no, misunderstanding ensues! Fortunately, the Other Person ends up being a relative, like a sibling or cousin. Phew. Crisis averted. But then, Major Crisis time. One discovers a horrible secret in the other's past, and thinks this is the end of their relationship, because this means that Other Person is not as perfect as previously thought. "What? She's not perfect? She should have told me that. I seriously thought she walked a different plane than the rest of us mere mortals. Now, not only is she not perfect, she's a liar, too, for keeping this from me." This all leads up to the Great Reconciliation in which Love Goddess reveals that she actually had a noble reason for not revealing her secret. This restores her status to perfection and everyone lives happily ever after.

You like my new background?

I sure hope so. I'm not sure where it came from, but I started playing with backgrounds and templates today, and now I can't remove it. At least, I don't want to take the time to figure out where the code from this background (which I used months and months ago) is sitting. But the good things about this wallpaper is I don't have to worry too much about coordinating furniture.

Announcing Flautissimo's spring concert

It's that time of year again, when Flautissimo gets out all their shiny instruments to play their spring concert. Here are the details:

Flautissimo Spring Concert--
Around the World and Beyond
Saturday, May 14th, 7:30 pm
Westminster Presbyterian Church
796 South Mountain Road
Admission and refreshments are FREE!

Memories of East Tennessee, by Austin Alan Scott
Praise the Lord with Flutes, by Sigfrid Karg-Elert
In the Village from Caucasian Sketches by Ippolitov-Ivanov
Danse Bacchinale from Samson and Delilah by Saint-Saens
Adventures in Space by Ricky Lombardo
Lyric Pieces by Edvard Grieg
and more!

structure and stuff

While I'm working on Rocky 4.0, if I get a moment to take a breath, sometimes I think about my next book. It's been in the works for a while, but I've been focusing on Rocky. Which is good, 'cause I think concentrating on one book and refining it helps me more as a writer than dozens of scattered projects do.

I've written about 100 pages in the Alzheimer's book, but I was so frustrated with structure. I wanted to include some memories from the past, and have those memories be a major part of the book, but most of the action is to take place in the present. Every time I tried to plan it out, it just wasn't working for me. I tried alternating chapters present/past, but that didn't work because it was obvious from the get-go what had happened in the past. I tried flashback form within the present, but that required lots of awkward transitioning and it wasn't a very balanced novel because so much of the past had to fit into the narrative.

Then I read Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King.

Ah, nothing like stealing ideas from another author. It was perfect! This novel is written in scenes instead of full chapters. Some scenes take place in the past, others in the present, and others from someone else's perspective. She starts each scene with a heading telling where and when the action takes place, so no awkward transitions.

So, for my next book, I'll be trying something new. That's right, I'll be abandoning the traditional chapter form completely. But it's the only way it makes sense--a nearly random structure for a book about scattered memories. It's always a little daunting to try something new on a huge scale like a novel. But I'll have A.S. King to guide me.

What fun is writing if you can't plagiarize while you're at it?