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Tag: random

Chupacabras; or, how I get my story ideas

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Several times in the past month, I’ve been asked how I get my story ideas.

As my official bio says, “I draw on my experiences to tell the stories of those around me, with a generous heaping of ‘what if’ thrown in.” 

For example, one night I was driving home and this big thing ran across the road in front of me. It was probably a dog or a coyote, but…what if it were a chupacabra? What if chupacabras are coming out of some kind of dimensional rift, part of some plot by evil satyrs to take over the world? What if I’m the only one who can see them and have to figure out a way to stop them? Yeah, that’s how I get my story ideas.

I found this in a dinosaur museum. I’m pretty sure it’s a prehistoric chupacabra.

Watch a little kid play sometime. He makes up fantastic stories, about monsters and battles and princesses and moms and dads and little kids and airplanes and god knows what. I did it as a kid; you did too. But as a kid grows, he stops voicing those stories. Maybe he writes them down for school assignments, but by the time he’s an adult, he doesn’t articulate them, and eventually that creativity is abandoned and rusty from lack of use.

With practice, everyone could find something to write about, but most don’t because they don’t think they can.

I refuse to let my creative voice get rusty.

Reading to your kids

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Yesterday was my kid’s first day of first grade, which means that Monday was Unpack Your Backpack Night – a chance to meet the teacher and drop off all the school supplies so your kid doesn’t need to lug them to school.

When we arrived at the classroom, each desk had a list of instructions on it. While most parents read it to their child (or read it to themselves, then told their kid what to do), I made my son read it himself. Despite their being a lot of big words on it, he did just fine because he’s been reading all summer.

The kid has been read a bedtime story almost every night since he was a baby. He’s grown up watching his father and me read. So it’s only natural that he wants to be a reader too. Oh, and his best friend is the best reader in the class. If he gets into the top reading group, he’ll be able to spend more time with her (six years old and his motivation is already girls).

Studies have shown that reading to your kids just 15 minutes a day is beneficial for their academic progress, not just in vocabulary but in listening and comprehension (especially if you ask them questions about the story). Independent reading for as little as 30 minutes a day can help too, leading to increased general knowledge retention in addition to the benefits of being read to.

If you have kids, do you read to them? Are they readers? What books do they enjoy?

Creepy advertising

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I’m a pretty quiet, reserved person until you get to know me well.  And along with that, I really dislike being hit on. No, I mean that. I’m not comfortable with pick-up lines or compliments from people I don’t know well.

So imagine my horror when I set up a newsletter with MailChimp, and the primate at the top of the screen greeted me with this:

Followed on the next screen by this:

which included a link to a YouTube video of a gorilla Phil Collins.

Not cool, MailChimp. Not cool.

Nonetheless, I’m going to continue using them for my newsletter, which I plan to send out to notify people of new releases and big shiny special news. If you want my updates, please sign up!

Y is for Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, and Procrastination #atozchallenge

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Day Y of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: yesterday, today, tomorrow, and procrastination.

As evident by 4 days’ worth of posts all posted in a couple hours, I have a problem with procrastination. Or not enough of a problem with procrastination.

My thinking goes like this:

  • I have something that needs done by tomorrow.
  • I could work on it today. But I could be doing other more fun stuff today, like napping or reading or being sucked into YouTube or cleaning the ceiling fans.
  • Yesterday/last time I procrastinated, I ended up working super hard at the last minute and getting it done.
  • Therefore, I can procrastinate now just fine.

Fortunately right now I’m mostly working with self-imposed writing deadlines: my upcoming short story book release, May’s Story-A-Day challenge, a short story collection coming out in December. But I’m also starting grad school in a couple weeks, so deadlines will have a lot more meaning.

How do you overcome procrastination?

X is for X-Men vs Justice League and Other Meaningless Preferences #atozchallenge

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Day X of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: X-Men vs Justice League and Coke vs Pepsi.

Sometimes, based on nothing other than which one you encountered first, you have a strong preference for one group/item over another nearly-identical one.

Given the choice, I prefer

  • Pepsi to Coke (except in France, where bottled Coke is delicious).
  • Letterman to Leno.
  • Justice League to X-Men.
  • Burger King to McDonald’s.
  • Cubs to Sox.

What nearly-identical groups/items do you prefer over another?

U is for Ubiquity vs Uniquity #atozchallenge

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Day U of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: ubiquity vs uniquity.

From Merriam-Webster:

  • Ubiquity: presence everywhere or in many places especially simultaneously
  • Uniquity: being the only one [perhaps not actually a real word]

As writers, we often have to strike a balance between the two. We want our stories to be original, yet at the same time we want them to have a broad-enough appeal to be widely read. Stay true to what you want to write and have a small audience, or write what sells and (possibly) enjoy commercial success?

For me, I’d much rather go with uniquity than ubiquity.

And saying those words (ubiquity, uniquity, ubiquity, uniquity – try it; it’s fun!) reminds me of a poem by French poet Jean Cocteau (not to be confused with French oceanographer Jacque Cousteau).

Le Toison d’or (The Golden Fleece)

Bouclée, bouclée, l’antiquité. Plate et roulée, l’éternité. Plate, bouclée et cannelée, j’imagine l’antiquité. Haute du nez, bouclée du pied. Plissée de la tête aux pieds.

Plate et roulée, l’éternité. Plate, bouclée, l’antiquité. Plate, bouclée et annelée ; annelée et cannelée. Ailée, moulée, moutonnée. La rose mouillée, festonnée ; boutonnée et déboutonnée. La mer sculptée et contournée. La colonne aux cheveux frisés. Antiquité bouclée, bouclée : Jeunesse de l’éternité !

(And in English – well, it doesn’t sound nearly as fun in English.)

Here’s the poet reading it in 1929:

Which word fits you better – ubiquity or uniquity – and why?

Q is for Quotations #atozchallenge

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Day Q of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: quotations.

Today I give you some of my favorite quotations from books and TV and who knows where.  (Yeah, this is a cop-out. But it’s late and Q is a hard letter.)

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.” ― Samuel Beckett

“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.” ― Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

“Just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.” ― Madeleine L’Engle

“Love isn’t how you feel. It’s what you do.” ― Madeleine L’Engle, A Wind in the Door

“No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it’s only a question of degree.” – W. C. Fields

“I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now, what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me.” – Abe Simpson.

What are your favorite quotes?

O is for Office Worker #atozchallenge

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Day O of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: office worker.

My writer’s biography starts out, “ED Martin is a writer with a knack for finding new jobs in new places.” Some of those jobs are ones I want, like teaching and research-based ones, and others are placeholders that give me a paycheck.

The problem with placeholder jobs is that they don’t require much from you. Type, file, no thought required. And I’m a thinker. When spending my days completing mindless tasks, I evaluate the computer system and come up with shortcuts that produce more meaningful information. I mentally add fields and procedures to enhance the product.  But because often I’m just an over-educated automaton, no one wants to hear my ideas.

So I look for creative outlets. Like popping all the keys off my keyboard in the name of cleaning it (those things get nasty fast), but then rearranging the keys when I put them back on. And being amused when another data-entry person uses my computer and becomes all confused because she can’t type well enough to do it without looking.

Or plastering my workspace with origami fish, culminating in a “tank” that I earnestly reminded people to feed if I was going to be gone.

Or decorating Santa for the off-season (he didn’t last very long, unfortunately; supposedly a patient complained, although we suspect it was a fun-hating

But the best, by far, was Norman.

Norman was a life-sized turkey head we adopted from the cover of an old hunting magazine we found lying around a waiting room.  He loved to travel around the office, jumping out at people when they least expected it.

Chris over at Plumbed Down shared some of his workplace antics, which are a lot more athletic than mine and definitely worth checking out if you want a good laugh.

What kind of I’m-bored-and-don’t-care-if-I-get-fired pranks have you played at your workplace?

K is for the Kingdom of Loathing #atozchallenge

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Day K of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: The Kingdom of Loathing.

When my kid was a baby, a couple friends tipped me off to one of the funnest games online, The Kingdom of Loathing.  It’s a text-based MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) consisting of stick drawings.  It’s very tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic, and sometimes just plain silly, poking fun at various cult and pop culture offerings from the past few decades.

You start off as a stick figure in one of the six various classes (I prefer Seal Clubber or Disco Bandit), then complete fifteen main quests and numerous smaller ones, fighting off reanimated leftovers, drunk hobos, hippies and frat boys, pirates, and really just a bunch of random bad guys.  You start each day with forty turns, but you can get more by eating food and drinking booze you find along the way.  Gold buys you new skills,

Once you beat the Naughty Sorceress in the final quest and free King Ralph, you have two choices: keep playing (the Old Man by the Sea directs you to harder oceanic levels), or ascend to Valhalla.

Normally I choose to ascend. You pick who to be for your next run.  In addition to gender, class, and skill to learn permanently, you can choose various options to make the game harder, like playing hardcore (can’t use anything from your previous life, including all your old stuff, or get help from friends) or going on a restricted diet.  A harder run gets you special items when you finish.

I find this concept really interesting, to the point that it’s influenced the collection of short stories I’m currently working on, to be released hopefully around Christmas.  What if when we die, we get a checklist of options to choose in our next life – ways to make it easier or harder, with more karma earned for a harder run? What if the choices we made in a previous life influence our future lives?

All the stories in this collection, tentatively titled Between Light and Dark, will focus around this idea, of two soulmates dealing with the repercussions of the choices they make not only in their lives, but in their afterlives.  And making it even more complicated for them is that often they don’t even know what those choices were.

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D is for D-bag #atozchallenge

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Day D of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: d-bags.

I’d planned to write out a long post about Dostoevsky and Russian lit for D-day, but I’m tired.  So I’m going to tell you a story about my students instead.

Last year I taught job- and life-skills classes, full of high school kids who wanted to go to college but needed a boost to get there; kids who could be successful in school if they got an extra boost; kids who were stuck in my classes as a last-ditch effort to keep them from dropping out; and kids who just happened to have an empty spot in their schedule and were put in my classes.

Needless to say, it was quite a diverse group: socioeconomically, academically, and racially/ethnically.

But they all had one thing in common – they loved to call each other d-bags.

Granted, my classroom management style was a bit unorthodox. These kids had so many issues that writing them up for every little thing would’ve gotten me nowhere with them. On day one, I told them my views on cursing: it happens. As long as it’s not excessive, and it’s not directed at everyone, I’m going to overlook it – but I WILL write you up if you use the words “gay” or “retarded.” And for the most part, the kids were great with it; other than a couple slips at the beginning they respected my ban on those words, at no point was the swearing directed at anyone, and it was never excessive.

Except for d-bag and its variations.

I tried to fight it.

N: “Mr. S is such a douche.”

Me: “N, don’t say that.”

N: “Say what, douche?”

Z: “What’s wrong with douche?”

A: “Who’s a douche?”

Me: “Stop saying that word.”

S: “What word? Douche?”

Z: “What’s wrong with douche?”

And so on. I was more concerned with debating the merits of Machiavelli’s leadership style, or showing them how to fill out a resume, or teaching them Latin roots to improve reading comprehension, than getting them to stop saying that word.  But finally, on the last day of the semester, it happened.

N: “Mr. S is such a douche.”

Me: “N, don’t say that.”

N: “Say what, douche?”

Z: “What’s wrong with douche?”

D: “You guys know what a douche is, right?”

A chorus of no’s.

D (a guy), clearly embarrassed: “It’s this thing a woman puts in her, um, uh, vagina to clean it out.”

A chorus of disgust.

And from that day on, I never again heard d-bag or any of its variations in my classroom. I pride myself on the fact that if there’s one thing I got through to those kids on, it’s that they stopped vocally calling people d-bags. And that’s a skill that will serve them well in life.

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