D, I Won't Do Drugs
WORD COUNT: 10,009
There is a secret -- all right, several secrets -- I've used to make my word count (the 50K or more words I need to officially "win" National Novel Writing Month) and make it not sound so much like gibberish! One of them is an item I picked up at a local thrift store a few years ago, a game from 1971 called a Scrabble Sentence Cube Game. Think Yahtzee where you roll dice and come up with the best combination; there's twenty-one cubes and you can make sentences as long as you want with them. I've been using five rolls of the dice a day to start sentences, passages, and come up with dialogue even when it sounds dated. I showed off this game at Saturday's Write-In at Minot Public Library where I brought the kids and met with two other local writers and they even helped me compose a few. I fill in words where I have to, and maybe I sound a little ... earthier than I did when I started writing the stories in high school.
Going back to elementary school, this morning Martha and I met with Sarah and Jeffrey's teachers Mrs. Perrin and Mrs. Evans for parent-teacher conferences. We found out that they're doing very well (that's not much or a surprise) but especially in school they are so much more willing to help and lead when they have to. Oh, there's one or two points where Sarah and Jeffrey could use fine-tuning, but Martha offered me a while ago the speculation that the kids act better in school, or are said to be acting better in school, than at home because their teachers show them respect and don't tease them ... like we do. Ba dum. I must admit, I do not think we are as hard on our children as that. I don't want them hating us and by extension ultimately hating God by the time they are old enough to be on their own. But this weekend it was easy to see our two as trying to be exasperating, not just confused about growing up.
Saturday soon after Martha came home from work we went to see the movie Trolls based on the 1980s toys. Parts of it come across as Cinderella for cannibals -- essentially, the small multicolored Trolls are constantly singing and dancing and all get captured by the Bergens in the mistaken belief that once they eat a Troll they'll know happiness -- but I will admit it's engaging. Watched Inside Out Friday night followed by the Pixar song "Lava" (premise: two volcanoes finally meet and fall in love with each other, and the song ends "I lava you" -- hear: I love you). Which Martha sings and Sings and SINGS until I go a mite squirrelly. And we're still working on Halloween candy from last Monday, bit by bit by bit. After church and Sunday school, we even got the lawn mowed as well as the satellite dish from Dish we no longer use out of our front yard; it took us all to move it, but whenever one kid couldn't participate they felt -- and didn't hesitate to let us know it -- left out.
Now vote tomorrow!
David
There is a secret -- all right, several secrets -- I've used to make my word count (the 50K or more words I need to officially "win" National Novel Writing Month) and make it not sound so much like gibberish! One of them is an item I picked up at a local thrift store a few years ago, a game from 1971 called a Scrabble Sentence Cube Game. Think Yahtzee where you roll dice and come up with the best combination; there's twenty-one cubes and you can make sentences as long as you want with them. I've been using five rolls of the dice a day to start sentences, passages, and come up with dialogue even when it sounds dated. I showed off this game at Saturday's Write-In at Minot Public Library where I brought the kids and met with two other local writers and they even helped me compose a few. I fill in words where I have to, and maybe I sound a little ... earthier than I did when I started writing the stories in high school.
Going back to elementary school, this morning Martha and I met with Sarah and Jeffrey's teachers Mrs. Perrin and Mrs. Evans for parent-teacher conferences. We found out that they're doing very well (that's not much or a surprise) but especially in school they are so much more willing to help and lead when they have to. Oh, there's one or two points where Sarah and Jeffrey could use fine-tuning, but Martha offered me a while ago the speculation that the kids act better in school, or are said to be acting better in school, than at home because their teachers show them respect and don't tease them ... like we do. Ba dum. I must admit, I do not think we are as hard on our children as that. I don't want them hating us and by extension ultimately hating God by the time they are old enough to be on their own. But this weekend it was easy to see our two as trying to be exasperating, not just confused about growing up.
Saturday soon after Martha came home from work we went to see the movie Trolls based on the 1980s toys. Parts of it come across as Cinderella for cannibals -- essentially, the small multicolored Trolls are constantly singing and dancing and all get captured by the Bergens in the mistaken belief that once they eat a Troll they'll know happiness -- but I will admit it's engaging. Watched Inside Out Friday night followed by the Pixar song "Lava" (premise: two volcanoes finally meet and fall in love with each other, and the song ends "I lava you" -- hear: I love you). Which Martha sings and Sings and SINGS until I go a mite squirrelly. And we're still working on Halloween candy from last Monday, bit by bit by bit. After church and Sunday school, we even got the lawn mowed as well as the satellite dish from Dish we no longer use out of our front yard; it took us all to move it, but whenever one kid couldn't participate they felt -- and didn't hesitate to let us know it -- left out.
Now vote tomorrow!
David
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