Trickledown.
News! Got a call from the Delightful Editor yesterday about the revised chapters I sent... she liked them! Hurray! We had a very nice discussion about some possible tweaks and then we both watched this:
(Thankfully, our relationship is nothing like that. Although the rest of the phone call was filled with saying something and then adding, "Or not.")
Abrupt topic change:
OMG, the rain. The rain the rain the rain. It doesn't help that we have an abandoned hillside lot at the top of our street that spills dirt out into the road, and it doesn't help that our house is downhill at the perfect point at the curve that sends all the water rushing into and then back out of our driveway. Last night at about 11:30 pm, I was in the garage searching for things to brace a little protective dam I was building to redirect water from the front steps (which are also downhill), and stumbling around getting soaked, hardly able to see out of my water-soaked glasses.
I hate to draw a writing analogy, but here it is (for you, Erica). Every object in the path of the rushing water, even the seemingly random ones, like a recycle bin or a small pile of leaves and debris, influences the flow of the water as a whole. I moved one recycle bin that had been left a few feet from the curb, and immediately a huge new flow of water hit the driveway. Yikes! A neighbor came out because water was rushing down her outside stairs. She also moved a trashcan, and twenty feet away, the water changed direction.
It's not pretty, but sometimes in a story you have to make a change that changes everything beyond it. And as a writer, you either panic and put the trashcan back, or you suck it up and adjust the rest of your water containment strategy (i.e., "book") to deal with the new flow.
Okay, so that was a stretch. I just had to tell about my exciting fifteen minutes of hauling pieces of our stone pagoda around and using them to brace a 2x4 in order to protect my house.
Yes, it's true what they say: Southern Californians are wimps about rain. But we have good reason. When you only get rain for two weeks a year, it gives the topography the rest of the year to shift and modify itself in such a way that rushing water causes, say, a mudslide. The hillside pouring into the road up yonder should have been a lush, green, stable hill. Except we didn't get any rain this year so nothing took root.
So next time you think about making fun of a Los Angeleno for freaking out about the rain, remember this:
(Everything a foot beyond the boards is water. Dirty, gross, fast-moving, probably gave me foot-ebola because I had to trudge through it in my flipflops water.)
(Thankfully, our relationship is nothing like that. Although the rest of the phone call was filled with saying something and then adding, "Or not.")
Abrupt topic change:
OMG, the rain. The rain the rain the rain. It doesn't help that we have an abandoned hillside lot at the top of our street that spills dirt out into the road, and it doesn't help that our house is downhill at the perfect point at the curve that sends all the water rushing into and then back out of our driveway. Last night at about 11:30 pm, I was in the garage searching for things to brace a little protective dam I was building to redirect water from the front steps (which are also downhill), and stumbling around getting soaked, hardly able to see out of my water-soaked glasses.
I hate to draw a writing analogy, but here it is (for you, Erica). Every object in the path of the rushing water, even the seemingly random ones, like a recycle bin or a small pile of leaves and debris, influences the flow of the water as a whole. I moved one recycle bin that had been left a few feet from the curb, and immediately a huge new flow of water hit the driveway. Yikes! A neighbor came out because water was rushing down her outside stairs. She also moved a trashcan, and twenty feet away, the water changed direction.
It's not pretty, but sometimes in a story you have to make a change that changes everything beyond it. And as a writer, you either panic and put the trashcan back, or you suck it up and adjust the rest of your water containment strategy (i.e., "book") to deal with the new flow.
Okay, so that was a stretch. I just had to tell about my exciting fifteen minutes of hauling pieces of our stone pagoda around and using them to brace a 2x4 in order to protect my house.
Yes, it's true what they say: Southern Californians are wimps about rain. But we have good reason. When you only get rain for two weeks a year, it gives the topography the rest of the year to shift and modify itself in such a way that rushing water causes, say, a mudslide. The hillside pouring into the road up yonder should have been a lush, green, stable hill. Except we didn't get any rain this year so nothing took root.
So next time you think about making fun of a Los Angeleno for freaking out about the rain, remember this:
(Everything a foot beyond the boards is water. Dirty, gross, fast-moving, probably gave me foot-ebola because I had to trudge through it in my flipflops water.)
posted by Katie Alender at
7:34 AM
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7 Comments:
Thanks for dropping by my blog.
Wow. Look: you're published (okay, well, you're accepted to be published). I am not worthy to type on your humble abode here in blogland.
It's raining really hard here today, so I was amused with your post. I have fewer woes than you, however, as my house is on a hill and the water runs elsewhere.
But-- I remember the floods of '83. OH my. We sandbagged State Street and turned a river down it. National Geographic even came out to photograph it, if I remember correctly.
My sympathies to you in the floods.
Video is pee yourself funny. Or not. Maybe something like urine, but not.
Yikes! I hope that your fabulous rearranging skills helped to protect you and that you didn't actually get ebola from running through the streets in flip flops. All the same, maybe you'd better buy a pair of rain boots for the next flood.
Rain!
Yeah, people weren't all that excited about the rain around here either. And it's flat. Basically when it starts raining, people forget how to drive and you end up with 10 accidents on Hwy 99 between Fresno & Modesto.
Ewww. Sorry about the disgusting water. Not a pretty sight.
But congratulations on your editor loving your stuff! How can you even notice the water when your feet must have been floating off the ground?
Paperback Writer! You are so worthy to be here! I am in awe of your courage in posting all about "Twilight" and the wrongness of it all. Thanks for coming by!
Eileen, you don't want to know how many slow seconds passed as I thought, "What a strange reply Eileen has posted." D'oh!
Christy, they did indeed save the house. And rainboots are on my list! I did take a hot shower that night, and paid special attention to the tootsies, though. So no foobola yet.
Jen, no one understands our pain. Actually we used to love the rain, because so many people just don't go to work that traffic is a breeze... unless there's an accident.
Robin, thank you! I guess that adrenaline helped me carry around what I later noticed were 50-pound sandbags and the super-heavy pagoda pieces. Because the next day, putting them into the garage was waaaaay harder than getting them out!
I grew up in Southern California and can well remember how excited we got when it rained. Here in Scotland, it is pretty exciting when it doesn't rain, but you are right: the ground is so used to soaking it up that it is a completely different story. It just rolls right off the soil, which by this time is largely composed of slugs, moss and the remains of my soggy and waterlogged sweet peas.
Great news about your revised chapters, though!
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