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Hybrid Pants

My writing “career” began in the first grade. Every week we had a “write and tell” where we could share with the class stories we’d written outside of school. One day, a story about Snoopy running away from home popped into my head like a little movie and I sat down and wrote the entire thing in one shot. I even added a few stick figure illustrations.

My writing style hasn’t changed much since first grade. Except for the illustrations. My art skills never progressed past the stick-figure stage.

But now, that “seat-of-the-pants” writing style that worked so well for me as a kid, has slowly become a royal writing hemorrhoid as an adult.

Story ideas still fill my head like mini-movies. Now though, it takes months, and in one case, years, to write and edit those stories into something coherent and readable. And those are just short stories. I haven’t even attempted my goal of writing a novel yet. The thought of mind-dumping, then spending years actually fixing a novel makes me a bit queasy.

Out of desperation I decided to visit the other end of the writing spectrum; Plotting. I recently dusted off a story idea and grabbed the book “First Draft in 30 Days” by Karen S. Wiesner from my bookshelf. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s full of character, setting, plotting, outlining and summary worksheets, as well as her advice on how to use all of them. If you follow her process, by the end of 30 days you should have an outline for a novel that doubles as a first draft.

I didn’t actually follow the whole process to the letter. For a lifelong “Panster” it was a little too much to absorb at first. But, as I worked my way through the character, setting, and plot sheets in that book, amazing things happened to my budding story.

Characters sprang to life in full color, making their desires and personalities well known. Ideas for events further along in the story generated faster than I could write them down.

While my current outline and synopsis don’t double as a first draft, I know exactly where my story is going before I write the first word. I also know what poo my writing monkey plans on flinging at my characters and whether or not they’re going to dodge it or end the day smelly.

I’ve become a hybrid of sorts; the Plotting Panster.

And now that I’ve got my plotting done, it’s time to grab the seat of my pants and fling some poo at my characters!

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Raising the Borg

Please bear with me as I give you a little back-story for this post.

My youngest son (Codename: Alan) is ADHD. When his first grade teacher first mentioned the possibility, I admit I just smiled and nodded politely. At the time, I believed that too many kids were needlessly diagnosed as ADHD and medicated. Then, when his second grade teacher brought up the possibility, I thought maybe there might be something to it.

Fast-forward past his primary care physician and two different child psychologists and he’s officially diagnosed as ADHD. Between his doctor, a therapist, and his teachers and I working very closely with each other and Alan, he’s managed to overcome most of the issues with impulse control, focusing, and listening that made school so hard for him in the beginning.

But there’s one, big problem that remains: Homework.

Homework has been a constant struggle since the first “Learn your ABC’s” homework sheet came home. In the beginning, he just wouldn’t do it. He’d sit at the table for the entire night getting distracted by the wood grain in his chair, the crayon wrappers, the popcorn ceiling or anything else that snagged his eye. Nights usually ended with both of us crying and the homework barely done.

And if he did finish it, he’d forget to turn it in.

That hasn’t changed a whole lot. He gets his homework done without (many) tears and distractions, but more often than not, he won’t turn it in. I’ll get progress reports home that look like this:

Test Average: 103
Homework Average: 37

Through the years, we’ve come up with many tricks* to help him remember, on his own, to turn in his homework or complete tasks. Unfortunately, Alan is rather like the Borg. His personal homework shields adapt quickly to a new process. Once he’s assimilated that process, it stops working. I’m then back at square one, frantically trying to adjust the settings on my “remember to hand your homework in, dangit!” phaser to hit him with a new one.

His teachers, bless them, help me as much as they can. By virtue of their professions, they have more ideas in their bag of tricks than I do, which they freely pass along. Ultimately though, it’s my job to get Alan responsible enough to remember to do what he needs to do.

And already I’m seeing signs that the homework shields are once again adapting.

Look for future posts as I discuss new ideas and how well they worked.

*If anyone, parent or not, has any homework help ideas, I will gladly hear them! Feel free to pass along your wisdom in the comments.

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Food Fanatic Friday – Gluten Free Pumpkin Cupcakes

Six weeks ago I went gluten free. While I could probably write a whole series of blog posts about learning to live without my favorite food group, Pop-tarts and Little Debbie Cakes, I’m going to dedicate this post to my new favorite dessert – Gluten Free Pumpkin Cupcakes.

Most of the gluten free “sweets” and bread products I’ve tried in the past six weeks have a noticeably grainy texture. Like someone whisked a cup of beach sand in with the batter before they cooked it.  Then, while desperately searching for some form of sweet-tooth satisfier the week before Thanksgiving, I stumbled upon this Gluten Free Pumpkin Cream Cheese Cupcake recipe by Andrea Wyckoff.

I didn’t hold out much hope for them. But since I had the ingredients on hand I threw a batch together. Before they finished cooling, I took a tentative bite. Wow! They were delicious. So delicious that the kids ate nearly all of them before I could even get them frosted. (I used vanilla frosting instead of the cream cheese one.)

The cupcakes were moist and tasted like spice cake. And while there’s no nutritional information posted (that I could find) I assume they’re relatively healthy. There’s no oil or butter in them, though there is a cup of sugar.

They’re super easy to make as well (which is a prerequisite for me cooking anything). From mixing bowl to cooling rack they took less than half an hour. I do recommend using a “waxy” type of muffin cup over plain paper ones. The second batch that I made stuck to the paper and half the cupcake peeled away with the cup.

Among other things at Thanksgiving, I was thankful for these little bites of bliss! I was beginning to think my sweet tooth would drive me nutty.

Now if only Kellogg would make a tasty, gluten free version of their brown sugar cinnamon Pop-tarts…

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Who is Karen?

While I’m not new to writing, I am new to blogging. So I figured I’d kick off my blogging journey by introducing myself to the world.

 

So who is this Karen person?

 

I’m a newlywed. My British husband (love the accent) and I got married on a day we could both remember. The date contained nothing but “1’s”. I figure that should (hopefully) keep us out of the trouble in the future!

 

I’ve got two boys. A teenager getting ready to learn how to drive (I expect plenty of blog fodder out of that experience) and a pre-teen getting ready for angst. They’re both great though and fill my days with joy. And sometimes screaming. But mostly joy.

 

I have a day job while I work my way towards my goal of publishing a novel. Thankfully, I like my day job. I get to design websites and write! Instructions and user guides, but I like writing those almost as much as I like writing fiction.

 

I eat too much chocolate and don’t exercise nearly enough to offset that in my mind. I ran my last marathon almost 2 years ago and my knee went on strike. My now healed knee is in for a surprise though. I’ve decided to carefully get myself back into running shape so I can run a marathon relay in 2013 with my sister. (Training=blog fodder!)

 

Last, for the moment, I write. I love putting pen to paper. Mostly it stinks. But it’s gotten better over the past few years. I’ve had two short stories published and recently received an honorable mention in Writer’s Digest’s 80th Annual Writing Competition. That caused much glee and girlie squeals at the mailbox.

 

In a small nutshell, that’s me. Karen. Newlywed, mom, sister, chocolate eater, writer, runner and squealer.

 

It’s been a pleasure introducing myself to you.

 

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you’ll visit again in the future!