Personal Milestone: Spanish

Technically, I'm talking about Personal Milestone #2, as Personal Milestone #1 was crossing the threshold into being able to think in another language so I didn't have to translate in my head when reading/speaking. And that one was huge for me, as Spanish was the first (non-English) language I managed to do that with.

Afterward, however, I felt like I stagnated. There I was, happily chatting with whomever and reading whatever while thinking in Spanish, but all it took was not knowing a given word (must do vocabulary drills!) or overhearing someone speaking English, and bam, I'd be jerked out of Spanish with bone-jarring force. Then I'd stand there, blinking, not quite thinking in either language, inwardly cursing my inability to sustain Spanish thoughts when those accursed English speakers were around. *g

Fast forward, oh, forever. OK, maybe 2 years. During this time, I visit Spain a couple times, Costa Rica a few times, no problem thinking in Spanish b/c rarely did I overhear any English. But in the U.S., same problem. Here virtually *all* the background noise is in English. I'd get jerked out of the Spanish moment just by overhearing Duran Duran or a car commercial.

UNTIL NOW.

I met someone from Costa Rica maybe 4 months ago, and over the past month we've been talking every day, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish. At first it drove me crazy that he'd flip back and forth between languages (sometimes mid-sentence! Aargh!!) but after awhile, I not only could follow along, I started doing it too, without even thinking about it.

And then this past weekend, I went to D.C. to visit some (English-speaking) friends, and while we were strolling down the pier in downtown Baltimore and chatting amongst ourselves, some people ambled past in the opposite direction. I accidentally overheard a word or two of their (Spanish) conversation, and got knocked out of English.

Yes. Insanity. All it took was literally a single word in Spanish and instantly my mind flipped over to that language instead, and all of a sudden I'm blinking at my English friends and grappling for the conversation thread.

Twice that day this happened. I wasn't sure whether to high-five myself (yay, automatically thinking in Spanish!) or impale myself on a machete (oh crap, automatically thinking in Spanish!) but it seemed like a milestone either way.

Later, I paid more attention to the thoughts in my head, and realized I'd been Spanglishing for who knows how long. At least a few weeks. Even when there's nobody around and I'm not being tempted by either language, my thoughts sometimes are one or the other or a mix of both, with no apparent cause.

Last night, I had dinner with a friend of mine who grew up in a Spanish-speaking home here in the U.S., so she speaks both languages fluently. I told her this story and asked her whether she tends to think in Spanish or English and was surprised to learn she often thinks in Spanglish, just like me.

And then I thought, maybe it's not without rhyme or reason. Maybe, when I'm thinking, the phrase that comes to mind is the better phrase. Every language has its own idioms and nuances and connotations for given words and phrases. Sometimes I can better express myself in one over the other. Maybe my brain is just taking the best of both worlds and using the right word for the moment, regardless of language. (I've even been known to accidentally respond to my Spanish friends in French, if that's what comes to mind first.)

Wonder if I can sell a book that way...

Refilling the Well: Mythbusters

A friend of mine recently asked me via email if I was getting a lot of writing accomplished. I was so shamed by this question (and the obvious assumption that of course Erica can't go more than a moment or two without making progress on her writing) that I didn't even respond to the email.

Today is the day I spend 8 straight hours if necessary to get where I want to be in my story. But yesterday? And the day before that? And the week before that? And the fortnight before that? Er...

Blah blah, unending string of houseguests, blah blah, traveling 2-4x per month, blah blah, conferences and chapter meetings, blah blah, client work, blah blah, personal life suddenly got really interesting, etc.

A (different) friend of mine refers to this as "refilling the well". I think she got this phrase from a writer's book on writing, wherein the author advocated spending a given amount of time not writing, so as to have something to write about when you do plop down in front of the computer.

I'm guessing that author didn't mean, yanno, months.

I do miss Old Erica, and how I used to write every single morning, without fail. I intend to bring that back. Starting now. Gracias a Dios.

When I look back on my weeks of little to no writing, however, I have mixed feelings. Did I have legitimate reasons excuses for not writing? Yeah, probably. Do I lament regret the utter lack of progress? Yeah, that too. Do I wish I would've been writing instead of doing client work and traveling and visiting family and pulling a 180 on my social life? Not exactly. I wouldn't trade in any of those experiences. I just wish I'd had an extra 3 hours every day to add on some writing time. (I'm working on a wormhole machine. I'll let you know when it's ready.)

Maybe I was refilling the well. Or maybe I was making excuses and practicing avoidance tactics. But I'm back now, and that's the important thing. Or maybe the important thing is that I realized I can have a life and write.

Huh. Who knew?

YOUR TURN: What do you think? Is there such a thing as "refilling the well"? If so, is refilling the well something we should consciously try to do every so often? (And when do you know the well is full and you should maybe go back inside and turn on your computer?)

Counting My Blessings

x-posted from ManuscriptMavens.com

Today I woke up not only in an exceptionally good mood, but with notes from Lacey suggesting I enjoy the milestones I do pass, and Bernard reminding me to count my blessings. The one thing I haven't felt very blessed with lately in my writer life is time, but I'm certainly blessed with people. And the more I thought about it this morning, the luckier and luckier I felt. I have:

* You. (Seriously, you rock. Nobody forces you to come visit me on the intertubes, and yet you do anyway. That's awesome.)

* The Manuscript Mavens. Carrie, Darcy, Jackie, Lacey--all super-talented writers and a fabulous support group.

* My agent, who either never gets tired of answering industry questions and calming me down when I spaz (or else is a darn fine actress, which I also can appreciate). Lauren rocks.

* My local chapter and our sister chapter down the road. TARA particularly rocks. I'm grateful for them every day.

* My in-person writer pals who trade crits or meet me at Borders to write or at restaurants to talk about writing or just to hang out. CPKel, Manda, Karen R, $Jean, June, Cheryl, Linda, Elissa, Karen L, Phyllis, Vicki, Julie, the list goes on--How did I get lucky enough to be surrounded by so many awesome people?

* My long-distance writer pals who are never more than a phone call / email / IM away. Diana, Stephanie, Tessa, CM, and Shari, especially. XOXOXO.

* My family members who encouraged me from day one. My other family members who think I'm apesh-t crazy for trying to write for a living, but support me anyway. My friends who never fail to greet me with a smile and a comment like, "How's the tooth fairy?" or "Finish your revisions yet, lazycakes?" Bless them.

* The blogiverse. Where would I be without the MaveFaves and all the reader sites and writer sites and chapter sites that help me procrastolate when I need a break, that teach me craft advice I never knew, that keep me informed on the industry, that introduced me to people who once lived on the Internet but are now among the dearest to my heart?

So, yeah. Today's a good day. No, today's a great day. How could it be anything but, when I'm surrounded by such fabulous people?

YOUR TURN: Count your blessings! I want to see 'em. I bet we're the luckiest bunch of writers in the world! =)

Successes and Goals

My pal Carrie has a great post today over on the ManuscriptMavens.com site about defining success.

Here's a snippet:

I think it's too easy to think "when I get an agent, then I'll know I've succeeded" and then once you get the agent shift that goal to "when I sell, then I'll know I've succeeded" without recognizing the success you've already had.

To which I say:

I remember thinking, "If only I could final in a contest, then I'll know I've succeeded." and then once I did succeed, that goal instantly changed to *win* a contest, followed by get agent requests, followed by sign with an agent, followed by sell for millions at auction...

Maybe we should make bulleted lists of our accomplishments and tape them to our computer monitors, so that every time we think about our new, seemingly impossible goal, we can glance at a long list of other one-time seemingly impossible goals that we achieved with a healthy dose of perseverance.

And then I visited my Google homepage (iGoogle) only to find today's quote of the day being:

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
- Arnold Toynbee

I think that's true... and I think that's me. Always striving for the impossible goal just past the more likely next goal.

World domination, here I come...

Scream for Me--At Last!

Alex Fallon was the one who lived. Then. Thirteen years later, a shocking phone call sends her back to the place she'd hoped to leave forever, to a little girl who needs more than Alex can give, and a town who swallowed her stepsister whole. As the body count rises, so does Alex's protective instincts--as well as her attraction and respect for the one man who trusts her gut over small-town rumors.

Special Agent Daniel Vartanian's brother Simon was a remorseless serial killer. Now Simon is dead. When trophy photos from the atrocities in Simon's past eerily echo a current crime, Daniel is desperate to find and stop the new threat before more people die. People like sensitive, secretive Alex, whose determination to find a little girl's missing mother--and inexplicable resemblance to a face in one of Simon's photos--places her in the killer's sights.

I love the inter-connectedness of the growing romance and gripping suspense in all of Karen Rose's writing. I also love having connected characters from previous books come to life in a chilling romance of their own. Not only is Scream For Me a keeper, it's my favorite Karen Rose yet!

The story is fast-paced, exciting, and tightly plotted. I meant to "just read a little" and ended up awake until 3 a.m. because I had to see what happened next. (And then lay awake afterward unable to get the creepy photos and evocative scenes out of my mind!) A great, great read.

Karen Rose: Scream For Me (Squee! )

If you haven't read this book yet, it's probably because it hits the shelves today. Drive, don't walk, to your closest book store and buy, buy, buy!

I am in the process of writing my first-ever Amazon review, which I will also be posting here momentarily. Karen Rose rocks!

How Do You Define Success?

x-posted from ManuscriptMavens.com

This weekend, Pam Morsi gave a workshop to my local chapter. During her presentation, she said something about success that really spoke to me. I'm going to butcher the paraphrase because I didn't have the foresight to write it down at the time, so apologies in advance to Pam if I screw this up, but the basic sentiment is this:

Don't judge your personal success by anyone else's. Where would the world be if classical oboeists decided their self-worth by comparing their iTunes download popularity with pop stars? They'd throw themselves on machetes, and then we'd have no classical oboeists.

(Okay, I added the bit about machetes. She might've said, "Off a cliff.")

I think in this industry, it's especially easy to want to judge our progress by that of our (internet) neighbor, or friend, or chaptermate, or so on, when in reality, no two cases are the same. Even with the same type of book at the same publishing house for the same editor. And there's little to no data aggregated for our perusal, not that it would mean much even if there were.

Despite all that, I think it's really important for us to remember that we can't all be Madonna or Outkast or Daddy Yankee or whoever the download of the week happens to be. I'm not exactly sure how to do that, mind you, but I'm positive it's essential for writer sanity...

YOUR TURN: Is comparing yourself favorably / unfavorably to others human nature? Should we kick it down a notch to save our sanity? If so, how? Is it ever a good thing to judge yourself by someone else's path?

WTF Friday

Another lovely page of my notebook:

What can I do to be better? Something¹

- 5 flowers²

most considerate thing ever heard³

nice to someone boss turned down come back twice order. why? nice-if anyone deserves, it's you⁴

wryly⁵

repeated, a little pat⁶

animals loose from zoo⁷

YOUR TURN: What the hell does that mean?!?! I'm sure it's meant to be a NYT best-seller, if only I could decipher my story notes... Put on your thinking caps and explain points 1 through 7 for me, wouldja?

Crackberry!!!

I now own a Blackberry. It's been less than 24 hours, and already I've learned so much about it just by lugging it everywhere and jumping right in to use it. I decided to glance at the Quick Start guide a few minutes ago (I may even RTFM later if I can't intuit all its functions) and this particular piece of advice killed me:

PLAY MUSIC
Listen to your favorite music* on the Blackberry Curve
* Note: Any audio files must be transferred to the BlackBerry Curve before playing.

Huh! You don't say.

(This is why I don't read manuals!)

Dear Apple: (What I Want)

Dear Apple,

I would luuuuurve it if you would custom design me some handheld technology much like an iPhone on crack gamma rays, through which I can organize and listen to mp3s (not proprietary crap!), organize and watch videos (of any size/format!), read e-books (of all file types) as well as word processing documents (pdf and rtf will do nicely).

All of the above should be indexable and searchable, the text files of which should also be content-searchable (so that if I have, say, a Farsi-English dictionary downloaded, I can open the file, type in the English word, and be taken directly to all matches in the open document.)

Speaking of documents, they should be easily bookmarkable (a la Sony Reader), and easily transferred from my computer wirelessly and via usb/firewire (without paying some b.s. $0.10 wifi fee) as well as easily downloadable from cyberspace no matter where I am (a la Kindle). Every book ever. Even if I'm in Costa Rica.

Since it would be based on an iPhone foundation, I of course would expect to easily manage contacts, calls, calendar, email, web surfing, etc, as well as be able to use the in-device camera and audio/video recorders. (And it must be SIM-card ready. I get around.)

Please, let the final product be no larger/heavier than a Sony Reader, max. And for the love of god, apply your Apple aesthetics and give me something sexier than the hideous Kindle to hold onto.

I am willing to outlay hefty cash for this device. And I will tell all my friends, family, cybermates, and so on, to procure their own. I will tattoo "Buy The All-New iPhonePodEmailEbookReaderInternational" on my forehead if that's what it takes. Just get this bad baby into a store (or e-store) near me. Thank you.

Love and kisses,

Erica


P.S.
You have until March 2009 to come through. I plan to pack one of these on my next international trip. Make it happen.

Never Hit a Girl

x-posted from manuscriptmavens.com

When I was a kid, I got into a fight with this older boy at my elementary school. He was skinny, nerdy, and wore glasses. Ditto me on all counts. I don't know why he decided to pick on me one day, except that maybe other kids always picked on him, but not me (and I was arguably just as skinny, nerdy, and nearsighted.)

So I'm walking home from school, 4th grade, backpack on my back (where else?), coat under one arm (in the midwest, temperatures can change 30 degrees from morning to afternoon), violin case under the other arm. Kid-who-shall-remain-nameless comes up beside me on his bike and proceeds to ride slowly enough to torment me the entire walk home. When this doesn't get a satisfactory rise out of me (I'm actually extremely slow to tick off to the point of action, so this went on for a good mile or so) he lashes out at me with his jacket. One of the buttons catches me in the eye.

It hurts like hell, and he's finally got my attention. Before he's even able to snap his jacket back to his side, I swing up and out with my violin case, clock him upside the head (smacked the heavy case right into his cheekbone!) and knocked his ass right off the bike.

As luck would have it, this was right in front of my house. My neighbors saw the whole thing and immediately tattled to my parents the moment my parents got home from work. I expected severe punishment for braining a 10-year-old with a violin.

Instead... my dad bundled me (and my black eye--that stupid button!) up in our jitney and motored us right on over to the kid's house. I was pleased to discover the boy from school looked much worse than me (the entire side of his face was black and blue and I'm pretty sure he was concussed) but worried now was when I would get my punishment, since I was so clearly the victor in the brawl.

But no. My dad proceeds to ream the kid a new one, topic being: Never Hit a Girl (Even With Your Jacket). The kid's parents appear, hear the story, then they too ream their kid a new one re: Never Hit a Girl (Even With Your Jacket). The girl in question (er, me) melted against the far wall and smirked at the boy-who-teased-me from behind my black eye. Justice was sweet, if lopsided.

Fast forward 20 years.

About a week ago, a writer friend received negative feedback about the end of her book, because the hero (cop) pulls a gun on the villain (serial killer) and blows her away. Yes, her. And that was the whole problem. "Hero can't kill a woman," people informed my writer friend. "Shooting girls isn't heroic."

Seriously? An act of cop self-defense to save the life of the heroine he loves isn't heroic simply because the story villain is female? What if he swats her with his coat jacket?

YOUR TURN: What do you think? Never hit a girl? Or only if she deserves it? What if you hit her with a high powered rifle slug and she, er, dies? Does it depend on her story transgressions? Or is it never okay for a hero to perpetuate violence of any type against a woman of any type?

P.S. Feliz Cinco de Mayo!!!

I Love Lee Goldberg, Part 2

Lee and I had a fabulous time last night at the hotel. (Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.)

MWA provided the free drinks, mariachis provided the music, and Lee provided the rhythm when he swept me onto the dance floor. I had never tangoed before (although from the moment I saw Arnold do it in True Lies, I always wanted to) and I couldn't turn Lee down when he was looking so sexy with a long stemmed rose between his teeth (he'd apparently seen the same movie) and one thing led to another, as such things do, and the next thing I knew he cleared off the dessert table with one arm, laid me atop, and whispered sweet dolphin sounds into my ear until morning. ¹

Other than that, the events were mostly writing-related. I had a blast talking to all the other writers, as well as several agents and editors. The TOR editors were particularly fun, and I got shoe envy from the cuteness of Nancy Yost's boots.² All in all, a good time!!

Erica

1. Just kidding, Valerie!!! Hehehehehe

2. Red! And adorable. Must go shoe shopping while in town...