Keep Working Bees

Bee on clover in my garden

“Did you cry at graduation?”

"No time for it."

Prepare house for market-

Paint bonus room vanilla-

Pumice tile revealing blue-

Rescue bees from the pool-

Shake chlorine from wings. 

Rub antennae into working order.

Marbles in the birdbath for bees to safely drink.

Avoid the basin, silly bees choose drowning.

Red and white herbaceous clover covers garden.

Neighbors don't appreciate of the beauty of lawn

that requires no watering, fixes nitrogen,

and feeds the bees.

New owners plant sod.

Working. 

Second revision done, 

search for the word, 

rub a pollen eraser.

House listed in the M. L. S.

College orientation for baby boy.

Mortgage job consumes endless hours.

"Make your bed!"

This hive is mite free.

Winter requires sugar syrup.
Summer's song pushes towards goals.

The landscape below our flight uncertain.

Meadow adventures ahead.

Keep working little bees.

Notes on this poem:
or cheat sheet for reading

I have a large swimming pool at my home in California. The bees feed on my flower and vegetable garden but I continuously find solutions for their desire to get a drink out of the pool. Once they swim they can't get out. Try and scoop them as best I may and I was one excellent lifeguard in my teens and twenties but many drown. I took the top off a bird bath I made and added glass marbles for them to have a drink and escape but they prefer the pool and certain death.

I'm selling my home as my youngest will leave for college in the Fall. The large house requires hours of work- cleaning, gardening, and the fixing that comes with home ownership. The garden doesn't have traditional lawn. I planted clover which requires no watering and native blooms that the bees enjoy. I plan to simplify my life and work on writing and my day job as a mortgage banker.  I don't know what is ahead - all I know is to keep marching like those bees I love.

New Years Eve Plan

Day before and the day after I will be by your side. 


What we do today is more important than yesterday.
Today might be cleanup day after having family over or the day before New Years Eve. Perhaps for you it is a regular workday where frowns at the alarm clock and an extra cup of coffee got you rolling.
My Mother had a stroke twelve days ago. This event may change the course of my actions for the next years. At eighty, I suspect her possibilities are limited but I want her to have dignity, improvement and happiness in the last section of her life. It is turn-around time for me. Time again to dedicate to others.
I have my game face on, my very best Scottish kilt with black watch plaid is ready for the dry cleaner and son’s Christmas tie is packed away.
New Year’s planning not resolutions, actual steps I will complete.
It might be O.K. for some to eat left over pie for breakfast and wear pajamas in front of the television on New years Day. I ask you to get up early January 1^st and see the sunrise with me. Put your work clothes on your back.
Today we write our five year plan. What is that you ask me?
Take today to handwrite this out Goals for the next 1 year 5 year 10 years.
Here are mine.
Work:
To write seven days a week from 4:55 AM- 8:30 AM and 6:00 PM- 9:00 PM. 3000 words a day. To journal in handwriting when walking, at gym, hearing conversations, jotting down ideas from life. To take three photographs a day. To work on short video and film two days a week. To further the software project with Google. To have pilot ready for X secret by February 1, 2012. To have The River finished for editing by end of January 2012.
To market my work face to face, twitter, blogging, Goodreads five days a week growing my audience readers to thirty thousand separate contacts by December 24 2012.. To answer all requests for interviews in three hours. To submit two poems or flash pieces to literary magazines and follow up on the requests for themed work.
To ask for reviews. To speak in public, at universities and perform at small theaters fourteen times in 2012 and ten in 2013. To have newspaper reviews in major print. To have my next book published in hardback by Tor or St. Martin’s Press and e released worldwide 2013.
To promote other writers and artists. To grow my writer posse. To buy and read 25 books of other writers of interest a month. To RT anyone’s self-interest who is kind and generous. To encourage others to be supportive of writing and creativity. To assist others in the daily creative life and process.
PHYSICAL:
Martial Arts Bone Conditioning, Running three days a week, Weights three days a week, Stretch daily, hikes four days. Maintain weight at 116 be able to run with Carson at half pace. In 5 years to still be same weigh and strength. May need foot surgery and knee to be able to keep running, adjust with swimming.
Financial: (not posting for privacy). X amount of savings X amount in 401k by saving 30% of earnings.
To sell 100000 copies of current release The Lucky Boy by daily selling through platform by December 24 2012.
Spiritual: To pray daily and be connected to God. To be great to others without preaching
Family:
To bring my Mom home to my house at first and have physical therapy work with her to be able to be independent in her own house in two months. I do not believe she will drive again. To have Carson get his permit and be able to safely drive himself to school, and assist with driving her to appointments. To have Blair also drive her to appointments. To encourage Blair to finish another short film. To get my siblings to agree upon a team schedule to make this work. Blair and Carson leave home, to go away to college and find their own dreams. To allow my children to fail and not be afraid to try again.
What are yours?
copyright © Caroline Gerardo 

we prosecute pirates.

Mapping the Novel for November

The Road Ahead, Caroline Gerardo copyright October 2011

Embarking upon an adventure, my team is ready, the cupboards and garage refrigerator are full who else is doing Nanowritmo? I have my plans, my note cards of research, the composition book full, the white story board – well it is waiting for all the information to unfold. I would label myself a very organized “pantser” as I do not know the ending until I am done. I allow the story to direct me in the first draft.


Here is my plan: 65000 words by November 24th. I will have not a full first draft but a rough without an ending, or perhaps three ending ideas. That is over three thousand words a day, a pace I have managed daily but I include blog posts as warm ups, poetry and shorts in my count. I will only work on the novel. I have a couple titles in my head, and this too is subject to shift.

My children have agreed to take on the feeding of the pets (in Laguna Niguel we have two dogs, two turtles, an elderly flop eared bunny and yes the hummingbird feeders need attention). They agreed to split up a couple of my chores so I can get up at five and start my quiet hours of writing at the kitchen table. It is in the morning I get the most productive writing done. I don’t have the luxury of a silent space to work in. Yes I have a room of my own, (several) but being a single mom with no relief I can’t lock myself away. My team has come upon the settlement that we don’t watch television, mom writes with her gnarly baseball hat and they read or complete homework. We play games and are intensely competitive to work for goals. Nannowritmo is just as serious as when my son and I had the month long chin up challenge. I build up to eleven, and I felt really strong about it until I suffered tendonitis, but that’s another story.

So who else is doing Nano and what challenges do you find ahead? What will you do if the laptop fails or there is a power outage for days? Let us share our triumphs and cheer each other on to the finish. How will you balance your home life, your day job and will you remember to pay the cell phone bill? I will be limiting my online reading, less blogging, but I will chat about progress and check on you by twitter.

@ cgbarbeau is my handle



Caroline Gerardo © copyright 2011

Writing, Goals, Planning

  It has been foggy in the mornings, rather gloomy for summer. Carson returns home Friday night. We have tickets to see the Decemberists at the Greek the same evening. I will drive five hours up north to pick him up then we’ll bring a picnic to the concert. Hopefully I can stay awake to make the drive home. It has been an intense summer. My flash fiction Entropy will be in Scapegoat Review Magazine September. I have the contract for the short stories to be written as screenplays. One first draft I completed in July the other I will start in two weeks. Scheduling everything I do these days. I function my finest when I have the most demands. With working full time, writing full time and caring for my family is a balancing trick. Plan my goals.

  I have some writing projects to organize. What better method than to list of goals.

  The Lucky Boy in final editing with Neal Hock, it emerges from that stage on Wednesday. I have to write an essay for him about what I want the reader to take away.

  I am writing two new novels at the same time. This seems as overload; but is working well. The characters in Pump are ones I already know. I have a story board in the downstairs bedroom and photographs completed. The other novel, Cumaean (clunky working title) is a chapter one I started online as a short fiction about an eco-terrorist but have decided to run with it as a full length thriller. I ran some ideas by an FBI agent to check my story and the plot motivates me to make it full length.

  On the advice of the poetry publisher, I met with their attorney about using the autobiographical elements. I have sixty some poems, flash pieces and photographs we are compiling. The stories range from natural world, literary, dark, and personal. The difficult angle is having it be fiction not memoir. A great number of authors write about themselves or what they know, but in this, I open a door about some negatives in my life.

  Rather than follow the legal advice to file, I asked him to prepare “model release letters” or something saying they would “hold me harmless”. The concern is some person may come back and want a piece of the royalty. Poetry makes no profit but ...

 The First Amendment protects writers but I have known some litigious personalities, so better to avoid the problem. Nineteen letters were sent, the strange thing, those who I thought would protest the most were encouraging and full of praise.

  Next project is taking photographs and short videos for the books. I plan to include links for the digital books that loop to my content and swing back each chapter for more savvy online readers. I completed considerable research about interactive reading and am progressing with our secret project but the technology I want is not yet written. We have conference calls three days a week and the computer gentlemen on the team are the most animated not the comedian or the musician team members. I told them last week we are all geeks and they sent me these weird and wonderful leucandendrons.

It is an exciting time in publishing. I only wish I had 44 hours a day to write.



ROW80 Writing Goals

Jane Brucker, 2011 reading at her Art Opening photograph by Caroline Gerardo copyright 2011

I have not checked in on ROW80. I have kept to my writing every day schedule .I threw out word count for now as I am reducing the novel from 151108 words to around 80000. I will have second revision done done done by July 4. I am going to Thriller Fest in New York on the following day. I am focusing on finding an agent who has passion and obsession for literary thrillers. My work is not a “pigeonhole able” single genre. I am writing thrillers, but they are literary and more general fiction than just financial thrillers.


I have settled on a title now that the narrative is set in stone.
The Lucky Boy.
What do you think? I had toyed with Lucky, but Alice Sebold has a novel/memoir (that I love by the way) of the same start word title. My novel is not the same.

Side note: One of my son’s first phrases was, “I’m a yucky boy.” By this he spoke with a slight lisp intending to express his joy and good fortune, upon which his sister and I would crack into shards of laughter. Now that he is fourteen, he uses it with a sarcasm that points out that being raised by two women has it’s downfalls.

Little Sycamore Canyon Trail Ridge June 2, 2011 photograph copyright Caroline Gerardo

I ask you to vote on one title: A Lucky Boy or The Lucky Boy.


Goals this week: Get Chapters 8-10 into clean speaking order by Saturday, exercise, love my children, and pray. No gardening, no dating (sorry Harvard guy), no time for frills. Focus on the finish line.

I will have the keen eye of the red tailed hawk that we nursed back to health. My eye is on the ribbon at the end of the race.

ROW80 Writing Second Draft Stay The Course

sweet peas in my yard

Productive Week

It is Mother’s Day and family has been the focus of my life path. In the past months, I have squeezed the limits of my time into allowing myself five hours every day (more on weekends) just for writing the novel. This causes some conflict with my extending family who live nearby. They like to pop in and visit. They telephone more often knowing I am pulling into a solitary cacoon. I maintain the love and support for my two children. I have never missed one of son’s baseball and football games this season. I make healthy meals and am hiking or running with them both several days a week. In order to work full time and write full time – things have to give me the solitude I need to finish.

This week I made a new story board. It is white board that is four feet by three feet. I mapped all the chapters. I added some images that motivate the characters. This helped me see clearly the journey that Seth must make through the narrative. It also made me decide to change the ending.

The story is somewhat chronological, with a few shifts in time. I used that in my last novel and struggled with using date in italics and point of view changes. Last time on the second draft, I changed the whole novel from first person to second with a few shifts. It was tedious editing and boring labor as focusing on a sweet gum leaf while Lamaze breathing out a baby. This time point of view is no problem. I am excited diving into the second draft and enjoying things Seth my lead character loves, slingshots, bergamot, insects, tinkering with inventions, and then all his evil bad stuff: bum fights, drugs, violence.

I wrote about 19211 words for the week. I word count is going to decrease now as I fight over synonyms and cut extraneous junk. If you are reading this, I need help on the title. I am now calling it Lucky. This is a novel title already of a totally different story. What do you think?

On my other lists of duties:

We hiked in Laguna canyon three days. The sage, the pearly everlasting and poppies have painted the hillsides.

Tomato plants are still alive, as are the dogs and Soup the turtle who is busy mowing the rose petals as I write.

I had fun meeting friends on twitter. The best is reading what they are doing.

The bank job has picked up a pace . I thank Heaven for the income.

The children’s grades are good. I have neglected my Mom, siblings and nephews. I told my nephews that Auntie Caroline cannot make them dinner twice a week until the second draft is completed. They frowned and the younger one volunteered to edit for me. I am cutting a big patch of my sweet peas to put in bowls for the other Moms in my life. Happy Mother’s Day to all.

Caroline Gerardo Author: ROW80

        Caroline Gerardo copyright April 24 2011

Caroline Gerardo Author: ROW80: I am over my target. I feel happy to report 9230 words this week. Good words. The novel is 93% of my first draft. Working title - LUCKY. Seth is a psycho who stalks a girl, kills another by accident, promotes bum fights for money, lies, takes drugs to dull the pain and becomes a huge success.

The word count is 146223 and needs cutting. I hate editing.
4 plugs for indie authors
1 poem
I finished short flash piece, not certain on title.
The story is about a song writer recluse.
I need to add images.
I exercised every day.
Job was busy and happy got some deals.
All pets and children still alive and kicking.
I am not making big Easter dinner fuss- #writing.
Didn't complete reading books, they are calling but saving as
reading is not on my list for this coming week either.

Goal:
4000 on the novel Lucky
3 plugs for indie authors
Finish flash piece with an image and post.
Exercise 5 days.
Get deals at work closed for a paycheck.
Need to follow back with four magazines that requested the book last week.
Pray, meditate and smile every day.
New writing group Thursday night.

Planning Write It Down.

It is spring time for cleaning, polishing and sharpening my pencils for great writing.


This is not my ordinary blog post. I am making it public.

With all the demands in my life, I need to write out my goals and stick to a schedule.

There are six key areas for my five year and one year plan:

Spiritual, Financial, Health, Writing, Family, and Fun.

1. Spiritual Life

I have grown closer to God by daily prayer. The rosary comforts me when doing the most menial tasks. I feel closest to Him when I am gardening. I will add ten minutes of meditation. This daily meditation is a big request. My life is packed with work, writing and raising two children alone. As the weather warms, I can sit outside and have this silent time.

2. Financial

I will monitor my stocks each morning for an hour. When I read about trends in the market, I can determine timing on buys and sells. I am not going to purchase commercial real estate or residential for three more years, as I believe the worst is not yet over. My house is upside down and I must continue to work full time. I must market my mortgage origination business to sustain my children and myself. I will keep to my budget. I need to save $ X dollars (number withheld because this is public) more for Carson’s college fund. In order to do this I need to put ten percent of my earnings a year into his accounts for the next five years. Blair’s college fund is completed. I want to purchase the video equipment she is eyeing for her possible explorations for her career. This is likely a large Christmas expense. I also want to send her to some film school this summer. I want to put the maximum into my 401k each of the coming five years.

3. Health

After surviving the big C, I need to be mindful of my health. The huge stress of the personal loss this year has worn upon my cells. I am buying organic produce. We have organic vegetables in our garden. I do not eat red meat or pork. I need to exercise six days a week. Walking, really hiking two days with my camera and three days running or something aerobic. Avoid stress, laugh at life and smile at everyone. Attitude is the key to health.

4. Writing

I want my writing to be my full time career by 2015. I will complete four more novels by that date. I will have a full time agent who assists me in marketing the work. I want to write well and reach a large audience. This entails a following of two hundred thousand. Publishing business is shrinking in these economic hard times. Art will be seen as an unnecessary commodity. My work must be general fiction, and genre specific as well. Focus on the novel, full-length work. I enjoy short fiction and it is fun to write flash but there is no financial market for poetry. I am expanding my reach in social networking, but it is slow brick building. Keep positive, write 4000 words a day. Do not whine about editing.

5. Keep my children healthy and learning. Teach them by example. Lead them to great things. Show them beauty in the sky. Talk about love and show everyone kindness. Take care of my Mom, she is getting frail. Spend time listening to my Mom. Talk with my siblings who I love so very much. Be helpful to those I hold dear.

6. Walk to the beach more and get in the water- this combines a couple goals. Light the fire at night and the Jacuzzi to hear the ocean with the lights all off. Joke with my children. Enjoy the people at work. Share some baked things I make with the office. Build the team at the office to be working together. Vacation plans in the US to visit independent bookstores. Get together with friends who are happy. In the past I did volunteer projects and fundraising for fun, I am not going to focus on this going forward. I am running an idea in my head to invite authors to come stay a weekend and brainstorm edit and help each other. I have the blessing of a beautiful home and amazing location, I can share that alone as a gift. Be creative in all things. Blair and I bought all the parts to make a chandelier out of Kerr jars, and the wine bottle wind chimes. Make things and give them to others. Paint, take photographs, cut flowers from the garden and put them in the house and give them to others. Laugh much more.