The New Place

There's no trace of me...

The thing that people don't tell you about your early 20s is that you become an expert at being a ghost. You move into an apartment or dorm, put down a security deposit, and then a few months later, you remove every trace of you. Hair is taken out of the bathtub, that spot on the floor is buffered out, the piles of clothes get packed away in your car. Everything you brought in here, is taken out.

By the time you take the pictures of where you'd just inhabited (just in case your sketchy landlord tries to take you to court), your essence has already been Cloroxed out. You no longer exist here. But if walls have memories, your ghost will haunt this dwelling place. I hope my ghost haunts the places I've been, because for a time I've fallen in love with each place I inhabited.

I've mentioned I'm messy, right?
This is my 'living room'

I told you guys awhile back that I moved away from the crazy neighbors, but I haven't showed you the new place, or told you much about it.

Probably because I'm still going through an adjustment period. Probably, also, because I no longer have wifi at this new place so I sit in the Young Adult section of the local library, hoping that the voices of the kick-ass authors around me will help muse me. (So far it's been working, I think.) This means the blogs you read are usually posted a week in advance now (trying to utilize my time, you know).

Well, Baxter and I live in Poland, Maine now. We live with an older woman, her son, his wife/finance/girlfriend (I'm not sure which so fill in your own blanks), and their son. (That's right, three generations in one house, and me and Baxter.)

Because I'm neurotic and freaked out when they started eating my food, they gave me a mini-fridge to put downstairs (it's the black box on the floor in the picture below). I'm now like a vampire; dwelling in the basement, getting no sunlight. I'm awake at night, mornings are still awful, and I'm still a horrible roommate. To be proactive, I'm trying to keep my head low and just hang out downstairs or go running. If I'm not around you can't fight with me, right?

Look, over there on the left. There's a bed.
Not an air mattress! 

The drive is significantly less to work, so that's nice. They also let Baxter out to pee while I work long shifts, so that's a huge help, too. But my anxiety level has increased substantially. It turns out, I don't like to talk as much as I think I do. Sure, I've been calling my sister for hours every day to chat but it's not talking. I don't like the superficial, "How's your day? How was work/school/etc?" I don't like answering the same thing countless times, "Oh, you know, I hate my job."

It taxes my energy level, and I retreat to the basement to be antisocial. Tell me about important things; politics, the fact the Shell broke the ice in the Arctic and is now helping destroy the world, religion, changing the world...Don't ask me about my day, when it's the same as yesterday.

I know at some point I'll be moving again. I don't know where (especially since I didn't get into TFA), and I don't know when. But at some point, I would like to live on my own again. In the meantime, it's nice to know that while a million things keep changing...

...Some things stay the same

**Note**
If you're a Twitter follower, I said that I was blogging today about Harry Potter. Sadly, the library I'm at doesn't seem to have any of the books, and I like to have pictures on the blog, AND my sister had some issues with getting her picture to me. Stay tuned, the blog post will happen. Sorry if that's what you were expecting today.

Research II: Obtaining Sponsorship

You know that moment where you write about something really cool? Like, maybe your MC throws a disc in a game of disc golf, or takes off running in a cross country meet, or stands up in front of peers at prom to sing some karaoke? And then you realize...

Crap. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Me (black) and sister (tie-die) preparing to sing karaoke.
The dismayed, "What am I doing here?" face is why
this picture is here :)

There's a point where you can't just make something up because in fiction, things have to make sense, or at least, be plausible. For example, if you're at a soccer game, you're not going to start dribbling the ball with your hand. Some people may not know that, but a majority will.

This is the point where you have to do research and fully understand what you're writing. Sometimes it's as easy as going to a middle school/high school and chatting with some kids. Sometimes you can google, "What are tents made out of?" (Which I literally did yesterday.)

In My Sister's Memories, Allie and Mike were stellar disc golf players. I sided more with Sarah (the older sister) who ended up in the trees. I'd played a couple of times before, once at church camp when I was in like, 8th grade, and once in August when I'd evacuated for Hurricane Irene. This second time, I played with my friend Jake and his friend Greg, who were extremely good players.

An excellent place to play if you're ever in Burlington, NC

At the time I'd played, I didn't expect disc golf to appear in a novel, but in November, that's what Allie ended up playing. Because I'd taken pictures with Jake and Greg, I had a decent recollection of the day and the game, but it had still been awhile since I'd played.

Now, I lived in Maine and had no idea where disc golf courses were, and didn't own any of my own equipment. So, I contacted Innova Discs, sent a simple e-mail saying:

My name is Lynne Schmidt, and I'm an author doing researching on disc golf for my young adult novel. (I told them the premise of the story), and then said, I was wondering if you'd be willing to donate some discs for my research?

Sure enough, less than a week later, I had an Innova Disc box waiting for me on the kitchen table. It was April before I really got to play, but when I did, I took note of the surroundings, the way I threw (and still managed to end up in the trees). But I got to play, I got to do sponsored research, and it was fun. PLUS! I got to keep the discs for future playing!

So, what's my point? Sometimes we don't have money to fully research our projects (after all, we are writers). But sometimes, we can contact companies, and they'll be willing to help us out in exchange for a blog post. If they're not willing, trust me, the lack of response doesn't hurt nearly as much as getting rejected from agents :)

Here's to research and here's to sponsorship!

Day 13: Distractions

Last night around midnight my sister, Laura, graced the Outer Banks with her presence. As such, I went to work today and she came in around noon. I was on Benedryl (spelling?) again so I was super tired all day (and thankfully, less itchy). When I got out of work, she still had another few hours left. I went home, cuddled Baxter cuz I was tired. Then Mike came over and we took a very long nap.

Laura came home and we all decided to go out to eat...it's now almost 11pm and I've barely started working on the story. Which, is okay because I'm far enough ahead that I can slack off a bit today, HOWEVER, tomorrow, there is a wedding I'm supposed to go to as well as reception and I'm wondering how I'm going to time manage all of this and still hit the 20 day mark.

Guess we'll see...

Side note, she stole my computer and wrote an ending for Igniting a Firestarter:

And then people lit each other on fire. And the whole world ended. There was, however, one survivor. He reproduced asexually, and dominated the planet. Then, his progeny spread to other planets. Then, the whole entire universe was a monoculture of this one guy’s offspring. A huge, man-eating disease that targeted monocultures came by and killed everything.

El fin.  (She told me this is "The End" in French...I was unaware...)