Lose on a Cruise

Carrie took off work last week and we went on a cruise we booked back in February. At the time we booked the cruise, there was no baby bouncing around in Carrie's belly. We had to get forms signed from doctors, and we just met the deadline of being able to cruise by one day. One day! And we wouldn't have even made that day if the doctors hadn't pushed Carrie's due date back by five days when we got the first ultrasound.

Everything started off wonderful. We drove down to Richmond for a night with my in-laws, hopped on plane for a quick flight and no troubles, and then set up shop in a NY hotel. That night we went to Ninja New York and had a blast. I wouldn't want to pay that much (everything is more expensive in NY) for a meal except for some other great occasion, but the food was great, the ninjas were funny, the ambiance unique, and the magician hilarious. Inger and Pat were a lot of fun and the whole night was a good couples experience. 

I have picked up a new quirk from the experience in the form of a mild fear of NY cab drivers. Wow. Affordable, quick, but if I drove like that I'd be in jail. Even when I used to speed around as a dumb teenager I never weaved that madly. Carrie was more afraid of the subways than she was of cabs, so that was the method of transportation we ended up using.

The next morning, we got to the dock early. There was no line. We checked in in around 15 minutes, Carrie pulled the pregger card, and we were on the ship within twenty minutes before most everyone else! We parked up in the buffet restaurant and watched everyone slowly mill about and load. The day proceeded well until Carrie dropped asleep at 8 PM. 

While Carrie was asleep, I went for a walk around the ship. It was starting to rock a bit in the water. I went all the way up to the top deck, but it was roped off with high wind warning signs. Now, I had carried a composition notebook up with me I was taking notes on. The wind on the deck I was on was strong enough to start tearing the top pages out of the notebook as I held it. It was impressive.

I ended up back in the room around 10 PM and Carrie woke from the last sleep she'd get. The ship was rocking a bit now, but I hopped in bed and went to sleep next to my wife around 11. From here on out, the ship really started rocking. We had a drawer that liked to slide open and shut itself, and eventually the wind was bad enough it prevented the the balcony door from sealing. The annoying rush of wind through a small leak became ubiquitous. The rocking and the wind did not stop. It went from 11 PM Monday to 6 AM Wednesday or somewhere thereabouts.

Carrie was miserable. Before the trip, she had been complaining her growing belly was making it hard for her to balance. On the trip, she didn't feel safe moving about the cabin. I had to steady her anytime she left the bed. On top of that, she started getting sea sick and there wasn't a single medicine proven safe for pregnant women that could help (the doctors and nurses all said so each time we called). Room service was crappy (they couldn't put a milk carton in a microwave), the TV played the same three movies for over 24 hours, and my wife couldn't sleep. 

Wednesday morning, we talked to the Doctor. She recommended that we get off the ship while we could. We took her advice. It was the best decision we could've made and I don't regret it in the least. Thankfully, Carrie had bought cruise insurance way back when and we're in the process of seeing what we can get refunded. The guest service desk was very helpful as well, and I'd like to say our room steward Iputu was very helpful throughout the whole ordeal (there just wasn't much he could do).

To get off the ship, we were required to schedule a flight. Basically, we had to prove we were willing to go back to the US instead of becoming illegal immigrants to Canada (not much chance of that with how cold the winters get).  Delta was quoting $670 each for a flight back to Richmond. That sounded nasty to me (even though the cruise insurance was supposed to pay it) and I thought it would be nice to have at least a day to recover in Halifax, so we called our agent: my mother-in-law. Mrs. Cassano quickly found a flight on US Air for $580 for BOTH of us and booked us at a hotel for the night. I know that the insurance would've paid for the full cost of Delta, but hopefully they'll cover the hotel room since we saved them the better part of a thousand dollars in airline tickets.

Halifax is, in a word, awesome. It was a great city to walk around. The weather was great, good food was everywhere (as was lots of beer), and I got to run up to and walk around a star fortress. Carrie took a nap at that point and I ran up and down the battlements and generally marveled at the monstrosity. I have a strong urge to pick up another Sharpe book or boot up Empire Total War again after the experience. 

Anyway, to bring a long post to the end, we hopped on a boat, got sick, hopped off, and then finally had a good time. We hopped on a plane with a pair of fresh lobsters, Bob and Marley, and flew back to Richmond to spend a couple of day decompressing with the Cassanos and cooking Bob and Marley. The names? Bob came from a T-Shirt Carrie's mom had tried to prank Carrie with that we happened to see in the lobster shop. Marley just kinda followed after. No talented musicians were harmed in the cooking process.

It wasn't the vacation we planned, but it ended up being a good story.

Feedback! WOO!

I got some feedback from Matt and Patrick recently. It's given me a lot of motivation to reread, proof, and as necessary restructure some of my story. It would have been nice for them to simply say "OMG YOUR WRITING IS AWESOME!1!!!11!1" but that would've been next to worthless in the long run. Thankfully, their comments were mostly centered around a few areas that I wondered about myself. Hearing them critique that part of my writing told me that I wasn't being paranoid.

The biggest piece of critique I received was that I can be overly explicit. Instead of letting the reader infer things, I will sometimes spell it out too directly. The first short story I tried to write was an overloaded description-fest. I made Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books look like haikus (great author btw). I've been reading a lot of writers lately to look at how they structure their sentences and what types of sentences they use. Everyone has a mix of explicit and inferred, but it seems to be a bit of an art form maintaining a spread out balance between the two. Matt also mentioned that I may want to hop views less often in non-action sequences. Once again, this was something I was worried about. I got a comment from the first editor to reject me (in person!).

Every writing site on the internet I've read talked about how writers have to become accustomed to criticism and rejection. It's just part of the field. You need the criticism to get better, and you're likely to face many many rejections until your writing is up to snuff and finds the right audience at the right time.

On a personal note: tomorrow, Carrie and I are going to drive down to Richmond to visit her parents. We'll fly out on Sunday to New York where we'll meet Inger and her boyfriend at Ninja New York! Ninjas make everything cooler, and sushi is already awesome. From there, we'll be going on a five-day cruise for our belated one year anniversary. I'm looking forward to it!

Evolving plots

Characters and plots have a life of their own (or at least they do in my writing).

If I wrote a story for every outline I make, I'd be swimming in books in a brand new paper mache house. I feel like I write a new outline every other time I attempt to write. Now, my outlines are usually more general things, but that's not the point here. The point is: my writing seems to take itself in new directions at it's own whims.

Right now, I've been working on another Janod short story. He's at boot camp, and since I've never been through boot camp, I have to rely on research and the stories of my friends who have. One scene I've been working on, has not been working. I've written a few outlines, but whenever I try to commit it to print the magic eludes me. 

I booted up Netflix for some research. I ended up watching a documentary on marine boot camp for an hour and half. Then, I talked to my wife who's ex-ROTC. The end result? I'm no longer going to write the scene in anything remotely the way it had originally formed in my head.  Hopefully, it'll be much stronger as a result.

The same thing has happened in my 'novel.' Characters have changed gender, a pair of throwaway characters gained new life and permanence, and several of the names are still placeholders until I figure out a naming convention I really like. More changes are yet to come!

Personally, I don't think evolving stories are a bad thing. The hardest part is to get something on paper. Once it's there, it can be changed, but you have to get it there! I have (and I'm sure every aspiring writer has) many thoughts of scenes of books that could be. They're all quite awesome, but utterly nebulous and worthless in my head. Until something is committed to print, it has little value. 

With every sentence, some of the apparition from my imagination takes form. As it takes form, the rules of this world start to take hold. Does the scene make sense? Is this what I had really imagined, or are the words changing it into something else?  It can be frustrating when things don't work out as planned, but in a way it makes writing a story more of an adventure in itself.

I'm looking forward to finishing the ride one day. 

Carrie's Car Got hit

It was at the end of my lunch break when my cell phone rang. The number had a strange area code, and I assumed it might be another teacher calling and looking for a substitute (too bad I'm working full-time!).  I picked up up the phone fully expecting a 15 second conversation somewhere along these lines:

Caller: "Hi, I'm a teacher at.."
Me: "Hey! I'm a teaching ESY too!"
Caller: "You are?"
Me: "YEAH!"
'click.'
(I've done this before and found it amusing).

However, it was USAA. "Mr. McCruari, your wife is not hurt, but her car was hit..."

I'm glad that the conversation started with my wife not being hurt. Carrie's in her second trimester.

The lady on the line continued to tell me a little bit about what happened, and then told me she was concerned about how upset my wife was. She asked if it would be okay if I could take to her and help calm her down.

Poor Carrie, was really upset. It was a hit-and-run on our 'new' used Prius that we'd bought from her parents. At this point, my lunch break was already over, but I signaled the other IA to go ahead and take the kids to the gym without me. The USAA agent, Carrie, and I spent the next 15 minutes talking on the phone and figuring out who to take the car to and what we needed to do to get a rental.

Praise God, that they called during my lunch break. I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. Praise God again, that Carrie wasn't in the car when it happened. It's a crappy situation, but I'm thankful that it happened the way it did instead of some other way that could've been much much worse.

I called Carrie again during the students' silent reading time to check on her. She hadn't gotten home yet, but she sounded collected. Then I called again the moment I put my students on their bus, and Carrie had already taken it upon herself to contact the mechanics, drop the car off, and pick up a rental. Once Carrie gets into 'work-mode' she doesn't relent until the job gets done.

Anyway, Carrie's driving around a rental Camry and life is continuing. Hopefully, we'll see the Prius again soon.

How to Edit Your Own Work: Part 1 of ?

I've been through high school.
I've been through college.
I've sent emails that I wish I hadn't sent.

Editing is oh so important. I've never had any real "training" on how to edit things, but most of it comes with common sense:

Re-read what you've written.
Try reading out-loud so you can see how things sound.
Always click Spell-Check.

Saturday, I re-learned an important lesson I'd forgotten from my college days: Always walk away before you come back and re-edit.  Why?

After writing, sometimes you have an image in your head of what you meant to write. You may reread what you just wrote and not notice a misplaced there, their, or they're or some other minor typo. I knew this (once upon a time), but it really struck home when I was showing Carrie my quick flash-fiction piece I submitted. She had sat down on the bean bag chair near my computer, and I (sensing a captive audience) pulled up my story to read.

Within seconds, I noticed the first typo.

The whole story had been written in a day, and I edited shortly after I wrote it. It was a quick, fun piece, so I went ahead and sent it out. Now, I'm wishing I'd waited a day and reread it AFTER some time had passed. Preferably after a nap or some form of sleep.

Maybe someone will read this and avoid making the same mistake. Or perhaps someone will read this and smile knowing they've done the exact same thing.  It's a learning experience for me.

So....a word to the wise: Edit all you want, but make sure you come back after you've gotten up for a while.