All the Grammar Knowledge You Need for NaNo

National Novel Writing Month is not the time to become a grammar expert. The entire idea of this challenge is to stop worrying and write, that is, to churn out 1600+ words of prose each day, prose whose main glory is that it exists, not that it is perfect. Stopping to study capitalizing, punctuation, and sentence structure can only be a distraction, and probably a dispiriting one.

That said, NaNoWriMo is also not a great time to be slowed down by worrying whether you've punctuated this sentence correctly, or indeed any sentence correctly. Picking up the Chicago Manual of Style will slow you down, but so will thinking that perhaps this entire novel will have to be trunked because you've used participles so abysmally throughout that it's not worth the time it would take to fix each page, paragraph, and sentence.

I'm running on the assumption that I'm not the only author who's been slowed down by such worries. From clients I've worked with and friends I've consulted, I don't think I'm the only author to have been slowed down by such worries. And the thing is, these concerns can be addressed pretty simply--all you need to do is learn a handful of general rules. They won't make your first drafts perfect, but they will spare you the time it takes to second-guess yourself or correct common errors after the fact.

Here are seven grammar tips that are easy to learn, that will make your manuscript look that much cleaner, and--once you've memorized them--will be seven fewer challenges to trip you up, slow you down, or worry you as you continue your adventures as a high-speed novelist.

1. The Serial/Oxford comma
What it is: the comma after down in the line "trip you up, slow you down, or worry you." The punctuation makes it clear that slowing you down and worrying you are two separate things. This can be especially useful if you're trying to distinguish among, say, your parents, Ayn Rand, and God. Or worse. 

Some style guides--the one that comes most readily to mind is the Associated Press style guide, the "journalist's bible"--prefer not to use a comma before the last item in a series except when required for clarity (and even then, you might get headlines like the one linked above). To anyone who has had that one darn comma add an entire line to their paragraph, this makes a certain sense. From the newspapers' point of view, they save on space, not to mention paper and ink, by removing that one character. In fiction, ink and space are not such pressing concerns, and the added clarity of the comma usually makes it worth including.

Whether you use the serial comma or not, some people may complain and many others will not mind; just try to be consistent for duration of the manuscript. It may be useful to make a note to yourself or even to create a 'style sheet' to keep open in another tab (or on a notepad next to your computer) so you don't need to pause and hem and haw each time you list three or more things. And while you're at it, list your stylistic choices on the following matters, too.

2. The Em Dash
You can make an em-dash in MS Word by hitting the hyphen key twice: --. Although Blogger doesn't autoformat them the way MS Word does, you can see I've kept the habit.
If you hit the hyphen key once, you get a hyphen, which is a perfectly useful mark but not the same thing as an em-dash. In all styles except AP, the em dash touches the words on either side of it--like so.

Em-dashes convey a casual, lively tone. They can be used in place of parentheses, commas, or even colons, making they wonderfully versatile. In fact, they're virtually impossible to use wrong, which is why I'm surprised more authors don't use them--and why I overuse them myself.

They shouldn't be used for more than one purpose in the same sentence. You can't set off a parenthetical with an interruption inside it all using em-dashes. Break out those commas, parentheses, and (semi?)colons. Still, don't sweat overuse of em-dashes on your first draft, because it's easy enough to fix them the second time around. In practice, em-dashes can indicate parts of the first draft that need more organizational attention anyway. Not all parentheticals are relevant enough to keep, for instance, and sometimes you shouldn't change the topic quite so quickly (or you should change it much sooner).

It's also simple, but time-consuming, to add a second hyphen and remove the space around the half-formed dashes you typed before you knew how to create an em-dash. You can do that in December. For now, go and enter spaces no more.

3. Dangling Modifiers and the Sentence Boundary Errors
A picky editor or agent might reject you for punctuating dialogue incorrectly. A terribly picky editor might reject you for being inconsistent with your italics. Still, neither of those errors are deadly to the reader. Even I--hardly an easy-to-please judge of prose--have gone merrily along with a story full of badly punctuated dialogue because the words themselves, and the characters saying them, and the plot they moved through were all so convincing and gripping.

The truly fatal error, one that will turn off most readers and virtually all editors, is failing to construct complete and functional sentences. Sentence boundary errors don't only make you look illiterate, they make the reader feel illiterate for trying and failing to follow what you're saying.

After penning a sentence, many writers hurry on without checking to ensure it actually says what they mean it to. This is fine on occasion, if you keep your sentences simple and your topics consistent. But a manuscript full of dangling modifiers and run-on sentences could require extensive revision just to make your meaning clear, never mind reaching the heights of eloquence. And that's assuming you don't get lost just writing it.

After penning a sentence, many manuscripts require extensive revision.

Wait, what? NaNoWriMo would be a lot easier if my manuscript would just pen its own sentences.

This is the dreaded (though not enough dreaded, alas) dangling modifier. "After penning a sentence," the modifier, does not apply to the manuscripts but rather to something or someone who is not present in the actual sentence. Specifically, the writer.

I'm uncertain if dangling modifiers are caused by too much faith that the reader will grasp the writer's meaning anyway, or not enough faith in the logic of the English language. That's not to say the English language is ultimately logical or consistent in any meaningful way--we shake down other languages in dark alleys for spare adverbs, for crying out loud--but it is logical enough that modifying clauses don't need to, and shouldn't, dangle. There is always room in the sentence for the noun they're modifying, usually directly after the comma that follows the modifier.

Though complete lack of faith is unjustified, faith may not be wholly out of place. Context will often enough make it clear that it's not your manuscript penning its own sentences. That doesn't make it okay, though. If you don't know any better, it's only a matter of time before you write a dangling modifier that really does confuse the meaning of your sentence (or at the least prompts a ridiculous mental image to those who read it literally, as many people do. Nobody plans to encounter dangling modifiers). If you know better, penning dangling modifiers is just intellectually lazy.

Participle clauses in general are tricky beasts. Another bothersome sentence structure occurs when "Penning each sentence, she left the manuscript to languish." This creates a wibbly-wobbly time warp effect where the pen-wielder is both actively writing her manuscript and leaving it to languish at the same time. I'm not sure if there's a proper term for this bugbear--for my part, I only know it as the Turkey City Lexicon's Not Simultaneous, and my editing clients know it as a margin comment reading "Simultaneous issue" or just "Simul."  

And lastly, there's "After penning a sentence, the manuscript was left to languish in obscurity because, hearing a voice out in the street, she dropped the laptop, running to the door and taking the stairs three at a time."

Whatever revision this sentence is given, it has to involve more periods. One sentence simply doesn't have room for that much action, or that many participles. It makes sense that a lot of newer or first-draft novelists write these kinds of sentences, since a certain amount of tunnel vision occurs in the midst of any creative endeavor. And it's certainly possible to correct these run-ons after the fact, but it may prove easier in the end to simply avoid writing them in the first place. Be conscious of the words flowing from your fingertips. As soon as you type a period, let your eyes scan the preceding sentence. Don't worry about it being perfect, but it may be a good habit to stop and revise particularly confusing passages. If you don't want to do this once a sentence, once a paragraph works equally well (I stop every three hundred words or so to correct misspellings and obviously unworkable sentence structure).

Even if it feels like a drag to slow down and ensure your sentences are functional, I think letting mistakes lie will always come back to bite you later. You'll either languish in editorial purgatory or never get that far in the first place. The good news is that once you learn to spot dangling modifiers, simultaneous issues, and run-on sentences, you'll commit them more and more rarely.

There are some other deadly errors in a manuscript (pacing and characterization are arguably more important, although they're harder to spot on just one page), but once you get most of your sentences mostly right, writing becomes much, much easier.

4. Grammar in Dialogue
As I've said, I'll still understand your story even if your dialogue is punctuated abysmally. I may enjoy reading your story a lot. But I guarantee you won't enjoy going over 50,000 words and correcting every line of dialogue, so it pays to figure out the general rules for it.

"It's that simple," she said.

"She" is lowercase--"she said" is not a complete sentence on its own. Indeed, it's a mere dialogue tag. A comma connects the dialogue tag to the spoken dialogue. The comma goes inside the quotation marks, as most punctuation does (the exceptions are mostly arcane, but can occur when the quotation mark isn't actually part of the dialogue: Did your brother really tell you, "Go to hell"?).

Later on in this post, you'll see I've written the sentence And then my beloved cousin told her, "Should I say hi to your relatives while I'm down there?" 

Put aside for the moment the fact that I started a sentence with "and." That capitalized A may annoy purists, but the capitalized S in the middle of this sentence might look downright terrifying. Still, it has a rationale: Should I say hi ... begins a complete sentence. "He told her" forms the lead-in to the quote: the dialogue tag. They're connected, as you see, by a comma.

Dialogue tags consist of the speaker and the word "said" and its synonyms, although I suggest you stick with "said" for the most part. If you want, you can add modifying clauses (After penning another sentence, she said, "What do you think of participles?"). You don't need to be allergic to the occasional "exclaimed," "remarked," "observed," "whispered," cried out," and "added," as these can contribute contextual information such as tone of voice. Do be cautious of tagging all lines of dialogue this way, though, as it gets distracting, and be wary of explaining the dialogue with tags ("You stole my money!" she accused).

Also be careful of tagging dialogue with words that don't mean "to say"--you cannot smile, laugh, or nod dialogue. These verbs form their own separate sentences. (After penning another sentence, she smiled to herself. "Now what do you think of that?")

5. Quotation Marks, Italics, Boldface, CAPSLOCK
Font choices best used sparingly but to great effect.

Aside from setting off dialogue, quotation marks may be used as "scare quotes" to imply the word choice isn't yours (She told my beloved cousin that he would "burn in the deepest subbasement of hell" for breaking curfew). They come in handy, but overusing scare quotes can get annoying fast, as they have a certain salty, sarcastic flavor. Don't make your readers feel like they're being clobbered over the head with your cutting wit--trust them to pick up the dissonance between words and meaning even if it's represented more subtly.

Single quote marks are used to set off quotations within dialogue ("And then my beloved cousin told her, 'Should I say hi to your relatives while I'm down there?' I'm so proud of his quick wit!" --And if I wanted to set "hi" off, it would indeed be with another pair of double quotes). Outside the US, these are sometimes used for setting off dialogue, and the double marks get used to set off nesting quotes. The thought of such a topsy-turvey world gives me illicit chills, although pretty much everyone will understand "these quotes," too. If you're split, I suggest using the double quotes. Because the single quote mark is also used for apostrophes, if you decide after the fact that you want double quotes you'll have to change every line of dialogue separately lest a universal Find-Replace will produce gems like you"ll. Changing double quotes to single quotes is a lot simpler. When in doubt, go with the one that's easiest to undo.

Italics are used for emphasis, to set off foreign words, and to show a character's internal monologue directly. (She thought of what an idiot she had been. I'm such an idiot). I strongly recommend against using quotation marks to set off your character's inner monologue, or they will give the appearance of speaking their thoughts out loud. If your character is psychic and communicating telepathically, italics are an intuitive choice to depict this, and context should make it clear that they're in dialogue with another telepath. (No, you aren't, he reassured her.)

Unless you are knowingly and deliberately performing an experiment in prose, I recommend leaving the bold tool aside for now. You will just distract readers who are wondering what you mean by the bold text. There are other tools, like italics, to use for emphasis.

WRITING IN CAPSLOCK gives an impression less of emphasis than of volume--an important consideration some authors seem to have overlooked. This makes them look varying degrees of belligerent and/or sugar high. The best use of CAPSLOCK is when a character is shouting louder than a mere exclamation point would suggest. Speaking of which, do not use multiple exclamation points to communicate volume, emphasis, or excitement. Once a reader sees one sentence punctuated like this, a great deal of trust in the writer is lost, as it's only a matter of time before some other courtesy of language is disregarded in favor of what the writer felt like doing instead!!!

Like exclamation points, scare quotes, and even italics, a little bit of CAPSLOCK goes a long way. If upon reflection you'd like to have less volume in your manuscript, you can remove capslock by highlighting the capitalized text and pressing SHIFT + F3.


6. Ellipses
These dots can be used to signify either an actual ellipsis--that is, leaving something out--or a suspension, hesitation, or interruption (although you may find the em-dash conveys an interruption more intuitively, as people being interrupted rarely have time for the brief but distinct silence an ellipsis conveys). They're easy to overuse, and you may find after the fact that they aren't all necessary, but don't let that slow you down on the first draft. They're also very easy to find and fix.

In both Chicago and AP style, a space is used before and after the ellipsis. Chicago style also includes a space between each period of the ellipsis, although MS Word may autoformat and take that out of your hands.

If the ellipsis comes at the end of a sentence, you include a period with it, for a total of 4 dots.

7. Tense and Point of View
As with everything else, you'll want to be consistent--sticking to a single POV and tense within a single scene or section. If you decide to write with omniscient POV or "head-hop," it's your novel--but for the sake of your readers, I strongly advise at least remaining within the same POV for each paragraph. It's not so much because I want to harsh on your omniscient party as that inner monologue, like dialogue, needs organization so we know who's speaking, and paragraphs are meant to provide that.

Some authors mix present and past tense artfully in their stories; others find themselves shifting their verb endings because they're carried away in the excitement of their narrative. It doesn't make you a bad writer by any means, although it can be annoying to go back and correct afterwards. When you're not sure what your next line will be, it sometimes helps to review the previous few pages to see where your scene is going--and while you do this, you also have an opportunity to make sure everything's remained in the same tense and/or POV.

But don't sweat this too much. If you catch yourself changing POV midscene, and you don't want to, but you also don't want to slow down to rewrite it, just make a note to yourself either inline or via a margin comment. Scene started in Martha's POV, now Jim's. You can decide to give the scene to Martha or Jim, or to split it between them both, sometime in March.

8. Spelling & Word Choice
Don't sweat this. You'll survive fumbling accept/except, or even you're/your--provided you know to correct it afterwards. MS Word's spellcheck is helpful, though not 100% accurate.

Yet be reassured: resources are available to check your meaning, if your peace of mind requires confirmation that you've picked the right word and have written it with the right letters. Keep Merriam-Webster open in another tab. Highlighting a word and right-clicking will also summon up MS Word's thesaurus, which can at least suggest if you're on the right trail of meaning.

9. Lay/Laid
Now I lay me down to sleep as I lie down on the bed.
I lay there for some hours, then gave up and reached for the manuscript which I had laid on the nightstand before tucking myself in. I might as well keep editing while I felt up to it.

You lay an object down: yourself, your manuscript, your glasses. You lie down. Your manuscript should not lie down of its own accord.

Image courtesy of Grammar Girl

While you're keeping Merriam-Webster open in one tab, open another for Grammar Girl, who's got you covered. I keep her post on lie/lay bookmarked for added reassurance.

Useful Things of the Week

I don't know if I'm actually going to make this a weekly post, but I suppose it depends on how much cool and useful stuff I find over the course of the week.

An excellent quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Airman's Odyssey comes to mind as I revise another article:  "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” 

Deleting excess words, trimming a piece down to its essentials, can be a very calming exercise. Although I naturally run long, that only makes me more appreciative of simplicity. A message is most effective when it's been pared down to nothing but its core meaning. 


Website: https://www.unfurlough.us/
A sort of jobs board for federal employees, consultants, and others affected by the US Government shutdown. It's struck DC hard (although we had a few good days for retail, as furloughed employees and stranded tourists hit the shops October 2 & 3rd. Even this past weekend at a farmer's market I saw a sign offering 20% discounts to anyone on furlough). Since my part-time work is in consulting, my job search has gotten even stickier than anticipated.

In the meantime, this website has been built by veteran-owned tech firm Blen and the 1776 platform using Drupal open-source software to host 'gig's (temp jobs) and available freelancers' information and resumes. Apparently the whole thing started as a Google Doc!

So if you or anyone you know is affected by the shutdown, consider uploading your resume and taking a look at the gigs.

Software & website: http://www.beelinereader.com/
I read onscreen a lot. You probably do, too. Beeline Reader's software claims to make reading onscreen faster by applying a color gradient to lines of text, allowing the eyes to follow along without skipping or backtracking. You can install the extension to use on your computer, tablet, or smartphone, and use it to read on websites, or you can copy & paste from a document or email to their online Pasteboard. I've read a few chapters of my latest PDF review copy on it, and I don't know if it's gone much faster but if nothing else the novelty of the shaded lines kept me entertained. And I don't remember even once rereading the same line, so it does work as advertised.

Website: http://www.autocrit.com/
The Autocrit Wizard is not a substitute for a skillful human editor, nor indeed for your own wordcraft. However, it is an excellent way to get a quick overlook of some common mistakes in your manuscript. It catches commonly overused words (it, had, see, felt, was/were, that), cliches, use of initial pronouns ("He did..." "She did..."), and sentence length (*coughs, shuffles feet*). Sentence length actually includes a cool visual 'map' of the sentences compared to each other. Lots of long lines in a row signals a problem (*shuffles feet harder*). One thing it doesn't seem to do is catch grammar errors, which is a pity because Microsoft Word's grammar check remains unreliable. As does the grammar of pretty much every writer.

Getting on my soapbox here:

"This is how you write dialogue," she said. "Notice the comma goes on the inside of the quotation marks. Furthermore, the 's' in she is lowercase, because it comes after a comma and not a period." She sighed heavily. "This is a mistake everyone makes at first--it took me a full year of writing to figure it out. But the sooner you memorize this rule, the faster all subsequent revisions of your story will be."

(If it helps, take out the quotation marks. It becomes much clearer that This is how you write dialogue, she said is a full sentence.)

Now, even once we figure that out, there are lots of other problems awaiting us--I continue to use comma splices, in a manner I think is stylistic but quickly proves when another person reads it to be just confusing. And sometimes the only way to figure out how the grammar in your sentence should work (especially when you're doing something stylistically creative) is to have another human being read it. Autocrit will not do that for you. On the other hand, human beings may not be as quick to spot repeated words and almost certainly are not going to count the number of words in each sentence for you. The Wizard is a useful part of a toolkit. Even if you don't run your entire manuscript through it--and even if you stick with the freebie package of basic tools--analyzing a few thousand words of your text should be enough to draw some conclusions of your own.

Personal Organization with "The Ultimate List"

From GetYeDone to scribbles on post it notes, I think it's pretty clear that I love to-do lists. They give at least the illusion of control over a busy writer's life, allowing me to organize tasks verbally and spatially, and most of all there's something very satisfying about striking through my latest conquest.  Only recently, though, have I seriously considered the motivational effect a well-organized to do list can have, above and beyond the momentary glow of accomplishment (which GetYeDone's XP system is meant to magnify).

Some of my ideas have come from Randy Ingermanson's Advanced Fiction Writing ezine. Actually a newsletter, this monthly email hasn't exactly proven life-changing, but it's free, open-source, and offers some genuinely useful advice, especially for the personal organization side of things. Ingermanson is possibly even more devoted to lists than I am. One of his articles (that I managed to find shared online; although ezine recipients are encouraged to share credited articles, I'm afraid I deleted all the newsletters in my inbox in a fit of organizational madness) suggests the division of sublists into "Big Chunks" for particular categories of tasks. This is similar to GetYeDone's Odysseys umbrella lists.  Being able to distinguish connected tasks--adding logic to the overwhelming list--helps keep matters in perspective. Most importantly, though, is Ingermanson's philosophy of allocating blocks of time to work on each group of tasks. He allows himself to go over time-budget if he's on a roll, because it's worth it to get a task crossed off for good (a feeling I know--I stayed up writing by candlelight once rather than leaving a story to be finished another day). Yet also reminds us that "You will never get your life under control, if by 'control' you mean that all your lists are finished." An empty to do list can wait until you're dead.

And when you put it that way, gosh, it really can wait.

Although the individual tasks on any given to do list often can't wait. And that's why I find Ingermanson's time budgeting tactic so very useful. It gives a sense of immediacy--I am going to sit down for 90 minutes, and at the end of 90 minutes this will be accomplished!

Similarly, in another article Ingermanson suggests using a "Hate List." This is where you put the tasks you need to do but dislike (mine would probably include housecleaning, certain revisions, and school assignments).  Again, the principle is that once you dedicate a chunk of time to work on the items on the list, inertia will carry you along. You can do anything for a half-hour and after a half-hour, you might find you can keep going. And once it's done, it's done.

A combination of these principles, plus some secret sauce of my own, has produced what I affectionately call the Ultimate List. It isn't a list of things I hate necessarily (although tasks I dislike are included), but rather a back-to-the-wall, ultimate-priority list. The "just do it!" list. The "this is really happening" list. Looking at it feels a bit like going over that first drop on a roller coaster.

It's how I got through September.

Each item on the Ultimate List:

• Must be specific ("write blog post about your to-do list," not "write a blog post")
• Must be finite ("write a blog post about your to-do list," not "do blogging.")
• Should be small (one blog post, one book review, one short story. For larger projects like my books I may block chapters together--so at the beginning of last month I had "Revise Starter Guide chapters 3 & 4," or "Revise the novel up to Chapter 5). 
• Should be something I put off when not reminded & forced to do it. Pleasanter tasks like going to the grocery store, cooking dinner, or giving myself a relaxing long shower don't count. Nor does "finish reading R. Scott Bakker's The White-Luck Warrior." I would do those if not reminded. Admitting that I really do need to finish the laundry, though, is another issue. As is writing up a book review (some days I really enjoy writing book reviews, but on others I'm brain-dead. I need to remind myself to strike while the mental iron is sharp...or some other confused metaphor). 
• The Ultimate list includes a due date where appropriate. Some dates are self-set, while some are deadlines for submissions, assignments for my writing course, or arranged by a contract. 
• Strictly speaking, the tasks due for completion sooner go higher on the list, so if necessary and Zero Hour approacheth, I can drop all other tasks and just focus on that one. I do this for anthology deadlines and used to do it for final exams & research papers, back when I had those. I've even met anthology deadlines in between studying for finals. 
• My other addition to the Ultimate List, and perhaps the most important: The "Why?" column. There must be a reason to complete this task. It helps prioritize and motivate, not to mention serving as an answer to the perennial "how did I get into this?" Right now I have a lot of "I made a personal promise" tasks, whether that promise is my Kickstarter fulfillment, receiving a free copy of an ebook in exchange for review, or a contract. I also have '"family/friends" (2 birthday gifts to wrap for two separate people), writing goals ("for the fans" should I need an outside motivator), and tasks that will provide me with income (the ever-persuasive $ sign).
• There is a danger of adding too many tasks. The Ultimate List works best with 5-7 items. I once had 14 pending (too many book reviews) and that was excessive. I had to sit down and make several points of order more specific--One Hundred Days is not going to be mailed to an agent anytime soon, but I can finish addressing my inline comments for all chapters by the end of this month. Even if I'm nowhere near finished formatting The Starter Guide... for Smashwords upload, I am close enough to taste the completion of the second draft, so that's what I'm currently shooting for. 
• The Ultimate List is for "Live" errands, tasks which I should be working on right now, not vague wishes for things I might do eventually. If my "Why" proves less persuasive and the due date isn't until October, I might push back an assignment in favor of a more urgent one. 
• Also, when I've done all I can do on a project for the time being, it's done. A discussion with a classmate at the Writer's Center encouraged me to look into making an audiobook of Aqua Vitae. I've uploaded the relevant information into the Audiobook Creation Exchange, but I have no other pending tasks until someone auditions to produce it.  
• Because a long list of strikethroughs can be less than motivating, I've created a new list every time I've finished at least half of the old list. I try to keep the total number of tasks less than a dozen, and make the goal of trying to finish at least 1 task a day. 
• There's also a danger of complacency--especially when I also list tasks in my daily planner. I cross out all the planner items for my day and forget to look at the Ultimate List. The workaround is simple: I select tasks from the Ultimate List to write down in my planner. 
• In addition, for general productivity I've discovered the magic of "Days off". I used to not allow myself any time off--when I wasn't at my internships, I was writing--but that wore me down fast. Now that I'm self-employed and my time is all my own, my rule is to work from 10am-6pm on weekdays, and from 10-noon some Saturdays. Past that, I'm "off". This doesn't mean I'm not allowed to work on List tasks, but doing tasks during my off time is a bonus. I won't feel bad if I don't do it, I'll feel rather good if I do. This does mean I need to be more serious about my on time, though. 

I've been using this method for around a month, and it has paid off. Especially, it's helped me to keep up with blogging (on this blog and on my internship and contract works) and book reviews. It's also helped me get through some revisions, chapter-by-chapter, and one short story has been completed, typed up, and submitted. I also kept on top of my Writer's Class assignments and some of my larger errands. The size of the task really does matter--smaller is better. For bigger tasks, the Ultimate List is handy as a source of reference, to remind me what I should be working on when I'm not sure what to do. It's less useful for when I feel like I don't want to do anything, but even there, it helps to have a menu of options so I can pick the least difficult.

I'm using my Ultimate List in tandem with GetYeDone. On GYD, I record some of my longer term goals, and once a week or so I log on and check off every one I've reached. I bask in the XP gains before returning to work. Not everything pending in my GetYeDone log is on my Ultimate List, and not everything on the Ultimate List translates into GetYeDone XP (errands, for example, don't really matter).

A last thought on awarding XP: after a personally trying phone call the other day, I hung up and thought to myself, I think I leveled up with that! If only there was some way to record...Oh. As I near level 10, I ponder what I should do to reward myself. Buying myself something nice is a questionable reward, given my current budget (I've also started keeping a cashflow record, and let me tell you, watching it go is making me much more careful with my cash!). And rewarding myself with time off may not be useful, either, given that would cut into the productive hours I've just learned to make better use of.

In any event, I have two more tasks in my planner for today and they're both on my Ultimate List. So I'd best get going with that!

List: Everything That Can Go Wrong (a Mix-n-Match Adventure)

Storytelling is problem solving--to have a plot, you need a problem for your characters to confront. Then the plot needs a reason behind it, and you have to make clear what's at stake if the problem isn't solved, while having some idea how your characters are going to solve it.

Over the weekend I started brainstorming problems-stakes-causes-and-solutions with a particular series in mind (another one!? Yes, another one). But as I went on I realized this list might serve as a more general resource. It does betray my particular interests as a speculative fiction fan and also my studies in international politics, economics, and development--but then, I think those need to be featured in more fiction anyway! This list is not exhaustive and I'd love to see others adding to it, as well as sharing it around with your own ideas.

These problems are all stated rather generally, and can be used in combination with each other (you'll probably see ways solutions will lead right back to problems). Some should clearly be used with sensitivity, and some have been done a lot, but there's always room for fresh and thoughtful iterations.


Threats (to your character--the stakes):
Death
Maiming
Other violence, assault
Abuse
Capture/imprisonment
Loss of free will
Loss of identity
Isolation
Loss of purpose or direction
Separation from loved person, place, or object
Grief
Illness
Exile, being very very lost and never able to return home
Failure at a crucial project
Abandoned dreams
Unmet potential
Loss or damage of a precious possession
Losing to a rival
Humiliation
Making the wrong decision--loss of opportunity, trust, confidence
Disappointing a loved one, losing regard or approval

Problems (society-wide, usually affecting many people but perhaps including your character):
I've tried to divide these into broad sections, but there remains a great deal of overlap
Political, Social, or Cultural
Oppression (legal, political, de facto) and cultural, linguistic, or legal barriers because of sex, race, religion, loyalties
--resistance to the above
Violence
--civil war
--uprising or rebellion
--invasion
--coup, power seizure
--police violence, abuse
Collateral damage of violence, disaster
Violence threatened (unrest, breaking up of diplomatic relations)
Crime
Government corruption or incompetence
Taxation (excessive, unequal or unjust)
Prejudice
Distrust
Betrayal (large-scale treason or interpersonal)
Enslavement
Colonialism, Imperialism
Unjust laws, obstruction of justice
Broken-down systems, infrastructure
Terrorism
Anarchy
Loss of cultural value--burned books, censorship, destroyed art
Education and childcare--orphans, abuse, homelessness
Migration, exile
Immigration, stigma, culture shock

Economic
Poverty
Inequality
Financial collapse
--Including of an individual business
--- because of boycott, blockade, mismanagement, sabotage
Corrupt corporations
Talented figure languishes in unjust obscurity
Shortages, scarcity of vital resource

Scientific
Unfortunate natural phenomenon/disaster (meteor strike, heath death of the universe)
Experiment gone awry (Frankenstein)
Discovery, revelation of things which should not exist (mystery or danger)
Experiment, invesitagion, or expedition is potentially worthwhile, but extremely dangerous

Environmental
Threats to environments--deforestation, desertification
--especially threat to beloved or sacred environment (ex. the Shire)
Water--droughts, floods, pollution
Pollution in general, trash or dangerous wastes (ex radioactive fallout)
Species extinction
Creature threats (everything from invasive species to monsters)
Loss of a staple crop, animal
Loss of fertility of the land
An inhospitable environment--from Mordor to the Haunted Woods

Health
Epidemic
Individual illness
Famine or starvation (interrelates closely to economic, environmental problems)
Disability, maiming
Fertility or infertility
Injury
Mental health issues: from depression to amnesia to trauma

Spiritual
Haunting
Curse
Threatening supernatural entities
--Malicious (Demonic or vengeful entities)
--Indifferent but threatening to humankind by their very nature (Lovecraftian entities, TV Tropes' 'starfish aliens')


Reasons/causes of the threats and problems:
Miscommunication
Deliberate lies
Mismanagement through incompetence
Unsustainable system or situation continues too long
Lack of planning
Ignorance of crucial information
Malice, mismanagement through malice or sabotage
Perverse incentives
Corruption
Opposing incentives between equally worthy parties
-Between two people, tragically star-crossed
-Between two factions: power struggle
Distrust between two sides that should work together
Jealousy or rivalry
Soulless bureaucracy
Unintended consequences/externalities
Cosmic Evil--or Cosmic Good
Chance, luck, or fate
Zealotry
Apathy
Security issues/fear
Sadism (of the non-sexy kind)
The death drive/will to nothingness

Solutions:
Divine intervention
Communication and collaboration
--Calling upon allies
Finding a satisfactory deal
--Truce
Character makes a sacrifice or trade-off
Technology (a new invention or new application of existing solution)
--Science saves the day
--Return to the Old Ways saves the day
Market-based solutions (why do these never appear in fiction?)
Banding together to institute a new world order (to balance market-based solutions, I offer a socialist revolution)
Public relations, Inspiring Speeches
Education or revelation
Compassion, hearts softening, the power of love and/or forgiveness
Crisis reveals corruption or sparks revolution
Characters 'dodge a bullet', escaping through sheer dumb luck (can be quite effective in horror stories, comedies or as lead-up to a final confrontation where luck won't be on their side)
Shouldering responsibility
Averting a mistake just before it's committed
Violence, or the threat of violence (against people or objects)
--by protagonist
---utilizing a special weapon or clever technique
---sabotage a diabolical plan before it goes through
--or by a greater threat (pursuing shark is swallowed by an even bigger fish)
Nonviolent resistance, defiance
A trickster solves the problem through manipulation, deceit
Use of disguises, hiding to avert or escape consequences
Feat of Strength
Money or wealth--access to adequate resources solves the problem
"Robin Hood" (vigilante justice)
Leadership--the rightful king, or free and fair elections
Heroic gesture inspires love, confidence, proves character's worthiness
Legislation
Litigation
Specific character's choice or judgement is upheld (the cute dog has to decide who he belongs to, the Gods are appealed to, the judge hands down her ruling at the end of an episode of Law & Order)
Evidence is uncovered to prove a character's argument or point
Evacuation or rescue--escaping danger by running, finding a place of refuge
Deliver a cure or solution that already exists elsewhere (Balto, in the movie of the same name, bringing medicine through icebound wilderness)
Deliver a warning
Though doomed, accept or transcend one's fate (the famous sci-fi story Cold Equations, and pretty much any Victor Hugo protagonist). This may or may not have any effect on the broader world.

Madwoman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge--the personalities of writing

This week my internship brought me to the Writing Staycation at the Writer's Center of Bethesda, where my supervisor, Zahara Heckscher, is leading a dedicated group of writers on a 9-5 retreat with the goal of sharing ideas, considering mission and goals of writing, and most importantly getting some words down on the page.

While I'm there to perform a number of internship duties (the staff at Trader Joe's are becoming familiar with me) and to assist with the Staycation--which has included the chance to talk shop and exchange advice with the 2 or 3 science fiction writers at the retreat--Z is also fantastically supportive of my own writing, and has given me a lot of time to concentrate on my work in between other tasks. Because my primary goal for this year, getting One Hundred Days revised and out to agents, has been nowhere near complete, I decided to use this time making edits rather than writing new fiction.

The first day, Monday, I edited one short story completely and wrote 1100 words of a new one. No work at all on One Hundred Days.

When we had our roundtable lunch Tuesday, I brought up my editing woes and asked if anyone had any tips. Lots of commiseration resulted--generally citing figures like '6 months to write, 3 years to edit.' Aqua Vitae was written in 2 months and took 3 years of editing, including removing and adding new material. Adding new material was always the easiest part. One Hundred Days was written in 6 months and so far has taken 3 years of editing. I wondered how National Novel Editing Month participants manage it, until I looked the challenge up. The goal isn't actually to edit an entire novel in a month, but just to put in 50 hours of revision. But of course, I was hoping for more than agreement that editing is hard. I wanted to learn a way to make it easy.

Then Zahara asked another participant if she remembered what they'd discussed earlier in the day.

"Oh, yes, how did it go? -Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge."

I looked between them, wondering if this was a major misunderstanding of a John Le Carre novel or its recent film. But no, it has nothing to do directly with Tinker Tailor or with the Mad Men TV series--unless screenwriters experience these states, too, which they probably do. Mad(wo)man, Architect, Carpenter, and Judge are modes of approaching your writing, and each person will experience them in a different proportion and with different feelings for each.

Madwoman-- "The muse is riding me," I say to explain this one. As if I'm a car, or a horse, or perhaps demonically possessed. The "Madwoman" has the inspiration side of the inspiration, perspiration equation.

Zahara makes a hobby of asking writers, especially professionals, how much of their work is produced through this fun, creative fugue and how much is...well, work. The answer is always heavier to the side of hard work, with inspiration being less than 30%, and sometimes 0% (yes, zero, nothing, nada) of a writer's career.

My own answer would be at least 25% inspiration/madness, 75% hard work. This doesn't reflect the amount of time I'm actually inspired--sometimes when I'm inspired I don't get the chance to write because of scheduling (and that can lead to a different sort of madness) and often months pass by without a good strong bout of inspiration. But when it does come, I can get massive amounts of writing done.

Two ready examples are the writing and revision of Aqua Vitae, and a short story I wrote while in Ghana. Aqua Vitae's original 15,000 word draft came out in 3 weeks or so, a pace which shocked and delighted the newbie writer I was then. Revisions took, as I've said, far longer, although I got a massive boot to the bum from the insightful reviews I received through the Critters sci-fi critique group. The feedback and suggestions got me to do the final revisions over the course of one summer. This included a point at which I realized a lot needed fleshing out. I added 3 new chapters, about 9,000 words, in 3 days. Then I had to revise the new additions, which took the next 2 or 3 months. I'm only exaggerating a little.

More recently, and with no exaggeration at all:  I had a remarkable Easter Sunday, 2013, at Mole Park in Ghana. It started at 7 am with a safari. I could wax lyrical about elephants, antelope, and the troop of baboons, but that's not what this essay is about. Suffice to say it was a busy morning.

When we returned from the safari, I sat in my motel room meaning to take a nap. But instead, I wound up picking up a notebook and started drafting a story idea that had followed me for the past week, ever since my class took a nature hike along a polluted, indeed a 'dead,' river and waterfall. The story incorporates some characters I've been carrying around for over a year as well, and between the shiny new idea, the familiar protagonists, and something more...maybe the environment, the relative peace, my lack of access to the Internet, the Muse coming down from the heavens, I just kept writing. I carried my notebook out to the motel pool and wrote there, with the help of a cool beverage (non-alcoholic, indeed Milk Malts are far more interesting than any alcoholic drink ever could be). I took a break for the afternoon safari, which got rained on, but that wasn't a problem as the cool water was a blessing. I wrote on the restaurant porch until dinner, at which point the sun set. No problem, I'd write by electric lights.

The motel at Mole lost power. It didn't regain it for the rest of our time there. As we finished dinner, the staff thoughtfully distributed candles and matches for us. I found that it was fair easier to write by candlelight than I expected. With my story almost complete, but a wind rising that made my candle flame flicker, not to mention turned pages most annoyingly, I got up to go back to my room. On the way, I looked up and saw a sky crowded with brilliant stars. The image was so beautiful it even terrified me. I returned to my room, encouraged my roommate to go out and look at the heavens, set the candle down and wrote another page. The stars haunted me. I went out to gaze at them. The absolute darkness on earth made them gleam as if they were close enough to touch. I was standing out in a clear spot, not far from the edge of the ridge the motel rested on, and while I was mindful not to stumble too far in one direction lest I fall off, the sight above me as so disorienting that I began to worry about falling up more than down. I thought of the 19th century romantics and realized maybe they weren't so crazy after all.

Then I returned and finished the story, by candlelight, at around 8 pm. I'd written 7500 words that day. Without missing a safari, and despite losing light and air conditioning. I think that's a wonderful sort of madness.

[Page 13 of 18, and a Milk Malt]

Architect--So much for inspiration. Now for the rest of it--for the working part of writing. While the Madwoman just produces, the Architect drafts and designs stories. She's a planner, an outliner.

Logically, I know outlining is essential to the success of any story. But I can't convince my gut that it's really writing. Which is perhaps why I find it so much fun. I outline stories before I begin them, while I'm in the middle of them, and when they're done (then as part of the dreaded writing of the synopsis, which if it really is just an outline with storytelling flavor, perhaps shouldn't be so dreadful after all).

Architects are also editors, going over the finished story and decide if scenes are out of order, missing, or extraneous. This aspect of story architecture is not as much fun for me, especially because when I dictate that scene needs to be moved, removed, or rewritten, I know exactly who has to do it down the line.

Carpenter--the Architect makes the blueprint, the Carpenter hammers in the nails. And gets battered thumbs for her trouble. The Carpenter is the one who rewrites sentences, cuts & pastes, does that dreadful bit where you have to search and find every example of an overused word and remove 50% of them, rereads trouble paragraphs until her brain goes numb, and basically commits all the drudgery that makes a story worth reading.

It's really satisfying to fix a problem sentence here or there, and I love the Track Changes strikethrough as I hunt down pleonasms (as Alan Guthrie would want me to), but...to do that over an entire story?

I don't like being a carpenter.

Judge--the Judge is the last of the editorial roles. After the Carpenter shapes the Architect's vision, which makes sense of the Madwoman's creation, the Judge is the one who reviews each line and fixes or improves the use of language.

Judges are in love with words. I am in love with words. I enjoy weighing and balancing, deciding and choosing, picking out the right words for a given sentence. I enjoy it so much that I'm guilty of giving overpassionate line-by-line critiques of other people's works. Although I've also received many compliments for my critiques and my work as both an Architect and Judge (I credit myself with helping at least one friend edit her way into publication, to say nothing of my editorial clients). Both the large-scale vision and the small-scale polishing can become an almost meditative exercise. Ever since I was a kid I could get lost in a piece of writing, all the more so when I'm allowed to share my thoughts on it and help make it that little bit better. But when you're beta-reading someone else's work, you get to do the jobs of the Architect and the Judge while they're the one who does the Carpentry. There's also a lot less pressure--I can make whatever Judgements I like, in the end it's not on my head what the writer chooses to do, or how the story turns out. Except when it's my story. Then it's all on me.

And I have to go get the hammer.


Learning this about myself might not cure my editorial woes, but at least I've pinpointed where the problem is--the basic paragraph-by-paragraph drudgery of fixing obvious problems and picking nits in the prose. Lunch was wrapping up, so I didn't have time to compare among the group and see who else finds Carpentry to be their bugbear, and who, if anyone, actually enjoys it (and if so what their secret is and/or their drug of choice). That may be a discussion for the coming days. For now, I'm hoping diagnosis is the first step towards a cure. If not that, at least I can console myself by remembering I still enjoy 75% of my roles as a writer (even if I don't spent 75% of my time on them).

Exciting update 3/2014: The information from this essay--plus much more--can now be found in The Starter Guide for Professional Writers, a step-by-step handbook through completing, editing, publishing, and marketing your writing!

List: What's surprised me most about Ghana

When I was younger, and I wasn't sure what to write but I knew I wanted to write something, I would make lists--to keep my thoughts in order, to generate some brainstorming, to summarize or highlight my ideas.

I have a jumble of ideas and memories from Ghana, so one way to sort them out--and give a preliminary taste of my trip--is to give you a list. A list of the things that most surprised me on my first trip abroad:

*The Handshake. One of my classmates had spent the previous semester in Ghana, so at the beginning of the year we asked her to share some of what she'd learned and done there. She introduced us to the handshake, which starts as an ordinary firm handshake. However, as your hands part, you trail your fingers against the other person's and then 'snap' their fingers with your own.  Now, I cannot snap my own fingers, much less anyone else's--though I'm happy enough to let somebody snap my fingers for me. Still, this seemed like such an unusual sort of greeting for me that I'd assumed it was something for the young, hip generation only. Instead, everyone I met in Ghana--professional speakers, community leaders, schoolchildren, businesswomen, craftspeople in their workshops, operations managers in their offices, mothers with babes in arms--used this handshake. At best I managed with a sheepish smile and an attempt to at least slide my fingers across theirs like I was striking a match. They seemed to forgive this inadequacy of mine with great generosity.

*For the past five years my professor has brought a class to Ghana, and each time in Accra they would find the huge, gorgeous presidential palace unoccupied. One of the first things we learned this year was that the new president has moved in after the recent elections. Opinions on this seem mixed--the building is no longer going to waste, but one of our taxi drivers commented acidly that it was just 'Too big' and gave the impression that he wished it would all just go away. While reading the paper one morning I found an editorial article that discussed the prospects of the palace's future inhabitants being "the first lady or even the first bachelor or first spinster," and found that last rather admirable. The United States hasn't even entertained the thought of electing a spinster (nor for that matter is our record on bachelors particularly rich).

*Another surprise, even a shock, that came near the beginning of our trips was news of the death of Chinua Achebe. I'd just read Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease this semester. This discovery, plus my proximity, appear to have finished off a literary giant. My discovery and admiration did the same thing for poor Elizabeth Sladen. In any event, the fact that Achebe died while I was in Africa is one of those things I'll be talking about for the rest of my life. Now that I've returned with a better appreciation of the context, I'm working my way through the African Writers series he edited.

Interestingly, I also had the opportunity to try the kola nut Things Fall Apart mentions so often. It came when we greeted a chief and were welcomed to his village. Kola tastes, for lack of a better term, nutty but with an edge of bitterness. A bit like water chestnut and wood varnish. It's also supposed to contain high amounts of caffeine, although I don't recall feeling a buzz. Yet again, soon after I went out and carried a bucket of water on my head, so maybe I was under the influence of a stimulant (to be fair the bucket was only half full, and I did a very poor job of carrying it).

*Accra. I wasn't quite prepared for Accra. To be fair, I'm not certain anyone could ever be prepared for Accra. The city is huge, and hot, and a hodgepodge of buildings--old, new, under construction and falling apart, rich houses with gardens behind barbed wire topped walls and with sheds at their backs and shantytowns around the corner--and street vendors, pedestrians, motorcyclists, and larger vehicles, and there are few street signs and virtually no numbered addresses. My teacher has been going to Ghana for five years, has built longstanding relationships with people of all walks of life there including guides and policymakers and history buffs, and she has never seen so much as the suggestion of the existence of a map of Accra. But I'd especially like to repeat that "no addresses" thing. We stayed at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel. On...the street where the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel was. Number Coconut Grove Regency Hotel. It's what we wrote as our address on our immigration forms, and it's what we told taxi drivers when we needed to get somewhere.

And about taxi drivers. Given this lack of clear addresses (navigation is by landmarks according to one Accra native we spoke to), it's very easy for strangers to town to get lost. But everyone's a stranger somewhere. In three out of four taxi rides, the driver had to ask for directions to take us where we were going. I found this experience unnerving, and after one particularly long evening came to the jaded and less than fair conclusion that hiring a taxi in Accra is just hiring another person to become as lost as you are. This isn't to say I was dissatisfied with the taxi experience overall, as one driver in particular was very upfront about the fact that he had no idea where we were going and did his best to keep in sight of the taxi ahead of us, which contained our friends who did know where they were going. Then the car in front of us at a taxi light did a driver switch in the middle of the road, holding us back, and we lost what my friend beside me had referred to as "the most stressful game of Concentration ever". We had no cell phones. This was our first ride ever in a Ghanaian taxi. In the end, we and our driver asked for directions.

*The sheer amount of advertising took me by surprise. I'm not sure if the quantity of billboards and signage is so much in excess of what you get in some parts of America (Los Angeles stands out for comparison in my memory--certainly rural Ghana has much more advertising than, say, rural Minnesota, which doesn't allow billboards at all). But what there was stood out to be because it was in a different style, and there was also advertising in places I didn't expect, and of things that I didn't expect.. When driving out of towns and villages there was frequently a "Farewell" sign, sometimes sponsored by an instant noodle company or phone service provider or the local congregation. The walls of houses, stores, compounds, and at least one hotel (not one we stayed at, though it might have been interesting) were painted with the colors and logos of IndoMie noodles, Glo Mobile or its competitor MTN, or Club beer, the last in bars especially. Also I think one street block was decorated in honor of a birth control device or prescription, in a gorgeously feminine purple with petal patterns. Offering your wall up for advertising seems an easy and affordable way to get someone to paint it, although I'm not looking forward to the day Americans figure this out. It seems the kind of thing that would get out of hand with us.

We also frequently passed 'advertisements' for funerals, which can be enormous, grand occasions in Ghana. They showed an image of the loved one, gave their name and nickname, age and dates, and the date and location of the event. Some notices were years old, so it was too late to attend, but they continued to provide a memorial to the deceased. I learned of the existence of dozens of people who seemed rather interesting, and it's a pity I won't ever know them or more about them.

*I knew it would be hot, but the heat was the sort you could never quite get used to. It always took you by surprise. "How do you function in 120 degree heat?" we'd asked our professor during orientation. "You don't," she told us. We spent a lot of time sitting or lying down in air conditioning when we could get it, and sitting or lying down fantasizing about air conditioning when we couldn't. We were lucky in that there were occasional cool breezes to revive us, and in light clothing and with plenty of water I was capable of participating in all our activities, including nature hikes, helping to open a village school, playing with the neighbor children, going on safari, and carrying water in a bucket on my head. Yet there were also times I almost fell asleep during speakers' presentations from exhaustion. To make matters stranger, I found out I can't sleep in extreme heat without at least a fan running to keep air moving. If the air isn't moving, I am. I fidgeted all the way through three nights at Mole National Park, where the motel lost power the first night of our arrival and never regained it. Mole is one of the hottest places on Earth. There was a thunderstorm in the middle of our afternoon safari, and we stayed on top of our open-air ride and let the drops fall on us. They were freezing cold, and we were deliriously happy.

Meanwhile, this week in DC it's 80 degrees. Combined with jetlag, I still can't function. That's part of the reason why this post is almost 5 days late.

*Disparities between rich and poor, I understand. They're hardly foreign to the US, and Washington, DC is an especially dramatic example. The side of town my dorm is at has some of the highest incomes in the country. Across the Anacostia, the majority of people live significantly below the poverty line. Yet in Accra you would find that same sort of wealth disparity in two homes side by side--a shack built behind the walls of a villa, the walls topped with broken glass. And the middle class seemed far less visible. They were in TV advertisements, eating at some of the more local restaurants we went to and shopping in the Accra mall, but I'm not sure which houses or apartments were theirs--I saw few that fit my American view of middle class, which my just be a function of my own expectations and/or the places we went to. Yet our guide, who helps plan and host tours throughout the country and has humbling amounts of historical and cultural knowledge (I don't think many Americans know as much about different aspects of their country as he did about Ghana) lives with his wife, a professional woman working in educational policy and in her early thirties, in a single room behind the bar his father owns, and frequently lacks running water and is not linked to the electric grid. As hard as it is to get ahead in the States, I don't expect to be living in a single room in my thirties, and if I am I will not be taking it as gracefully as they did.

*Things were startlingly inexpensive, with the exception of dining and alcohol at the hotels. Those were the sort of prices you can reasonably charge Western tourists. However, we had several memorable experiences with street vendors where what we thought was one cedi (or about 50 cents US) worth of goods turned out to be a fraction of that--we were paying for a bowl of mangoes instead of one, a string of peanuts instead of a single package. Taxi rides were five or fifteen cedits--$2.50-$7.00 US. I purchased a genuine kente-weave tie from a cooperative store for 7 cedis, and a basket that in the US would have been $35 at the cheapest was only 15 cedis. Quality did not suffer on the whole, although service in restaurants was very inconsistent with American expectations. And they were charging us the higher prices!

*I said that among Accra's buildings were many either under construction or falling apart, but to be honest I'm not certain about the falling apart bit. I played a game throughout the countryside--"Going up or coming down?"--trying to decide the state of the cement walls, shining blue glass panes, and metal or tile roofs that were in place but clearly not in use. At first I thought Ghana was full of ruins, but when I asked my professor she told me to guess "Going up" every time, as I'd be right. Construction is booming, but in many cases it's a slow boom. People go to work in the cities or sometimes abroad, and start building a new house back at home. They add on to it little by little as they have money to spare. Sometimes the process takes so long that trees begin sprouting in the rooms, adding to the appearance of ruin. Also, in some of the more urban areas it looked like people got impatient with the process and moved in to the ground floor while rooms higher up were still being constructed.

*So while there certainly wasn't much decay architecturally, the landscape did look ruinous in places for another reason: very little trash collection, almost no trash cans, and a lot, a lot of plastic and consumer waste, not to mention sewage (the sewers were for the most part open, and located where in the US you would have sidewalks. We learned to step around and over them). We saw a canal flowing through Accra was literally choked with black plastic bags and waste. All of it flowing out to the ocean. Even rural villages had areas of ground covered in refuse. It was unparalleled for me and disturbing. Nobody else seemed to notice, although areas meant to attract tourists and investment were usually better maintained.

*In general I do not enjoy the presence of children. They make me nervous. They are human beings, but they do not yet think or behave like the human beings I am most used to, and also they are fragile and I'm afraid I might break them if I hold their hands too tightly or try to pick them up only to prove incapable or, most fatally of all, try to communicate to them in words of too many syllables. Barring that, as a group they haven't learned social mores like 'be quiet in public,' 'don't be cruel to animals,' and 'don't take things that don't belong to you,' making them adorable miniature agents of chaos.

However, I really loved the kids I met in Ghana. They were more mature, quieter, more responsible, and more well-behaved. They were friendly, but they didn't seek attention in loud or disruptive ways. As my class was led through a village I might suddenly feel a little hand slip into mine, and look down to see a surprisingly grave face turned up to me. They were very happy to wave and be waved at when our bus drove past them (it made me feel a bit like a celebrity to see faces light up when I waved back, and I was glad to add some excitement to their days because, while many of them should have been in school, they were instead at work looking after livestock or their younger siblings or fetching and carrying water or firewood. It's an odd feeling to be enthusiastically saluted by a child who is obviously taking a break from heavy manual labor). Also, our professor, who specializes in early childhood development and education, ensured we were all equipped with bubbles so that we had something to do should we suddenly encounter a child and be in need of an icebreaker.

*Whatever my anxieties about children might be, I at least recognize them to be blown out of proportion. Monkeys, however...I was both more afraid and less afraid of primates that I should have been. I'm afraid of children because they resemble human beings I know best but are more difficult to communicate with. Monkeys even more so, plus they can bite you. The day before we visited the Tafe Atome monkey sanctuary horrible visions danced in my brain of a rabies-infected bite sending me home prematurely. I didn't want to miss the rest of my trip to Ghana, or did I like the thought of rabies or rabies shots. My professor didn't help with the warning that a monkey might jump on my back, although "They're less likely to do it if you aren't holding a banana" and she approved of the veneer of stoicism I promised to keep up.
It turns out the Tafe Atome monkeys were tiny, silky-furred, and interested in humans only as a vehicle for delivering bananas (which aren't supposed to be monkey food, but it's what the people running the sanctuary decided to feed them, so). I didn't hold bananas until the very end, when after watching everyone else beckon cute little harmless woodland creatures near them I decided my veneer of stoicism wasn't necessary after all. Two monkeys each grabbed half of my banana and ran off without a ghost of a whisper of physical contact. Much less rabies.

I've come around so far in regards to tiny primates that I befriended the little monkey kept in a cage at our beach resort in Cape Coast. It should not have been in that cage--he or she was far too intelligent to be left alone and without any source of amusement. I'd offer the monkey snacks from the corn cobs left, I think, for the purpose of feeding the parrots next to him. He seemed to enjoy the momentary amusement and would always chirp (like birdsong) when I walked by.

On the other hand, my class was mugged and then besieged in our motel rooms at Mole by a band of baboons. Primates are terrifying.

*On that note, the number of things that I did and which happened to me that I cannot tell my mother about is truly alarming. From visiting two 'slums' in Accra (I'm hesitant honestly to call it a slum, because while it was certainly very impoverished I don't want to imply anything unsavory about the people living there, who were hardworking, friendly, and were hanging out their Sunday wash to dry as we came through), to designating a pair of sneakers my 'walking-through-sewers-and-compost' shoes, to being besieged by baboons, to managing without running water for several days in a few of our motels and hostels. My mother, bless her, is a neatnick. I'm not, at least not anymore. You just come to stop worrying about it. I can objectively say the filthiest I have ever been in my life was the Kintopo Rest Stop, after 3 days in Mole with no air conditioning and little running water, after a 4 hour bus drive. It only really hit me when I used the offered water bowls and soap at the canteen to wash my hands. And then I bought myself some chocolate Fan Ice.