Writer's Conference at the Leadership Center

I know I have said such things before, and I have heard other writers say similar things.  But going to a conference and spending time with one's own people is an amazing thing.  I very much enjoyed the Nebraska Writers Guild conference this fall at the Leadership Center. 

It was two days being with other writers.  The conversations I heard around me, the ones I had myself; they are not the things I hear in my normal life.  Of course this is not completely true.  I have a house full of writers.  But there is something about being with others who share your interests.

I know the conference has just ended.  But I am looking forward to going again next time.

Eclipse 2017

I am old enough to remember the partial eclipse that we had in NE back in 1979.  I was in the Middle Room (which means 3-5th grade), at Zion Lutheran School, Worms, NE.  I am not sure I really knew that the eclipse was coming before that day at school.  I do know that we all went out the back door of the school and watched the eclipse through a hole in a piece of paper as the shadow was made onto a second piece of paper.  I thought it was awesome at the time.  Now that I am thinking back to this, this might have been about the time I was thinking it would be a good idea to be an astronaut.  

So now as we were waiting for this total eclipse to happen in 2017, I of course was very excited to see it.  I was lucky enough that my town was going to be hosting a wonderful event for that day.

 My kids and I packed up our things and headed over to the park.  As we walked over it was a mostly clear beautiful day.  I was really hoping that it would continue, as the forecast had predicted mostly cloudy by eclipse time.  This is as thick as the clouds were at that time.  Not a problem for viewing the eclipse.

We had some special guests for the day.  There were several dancers from the Omaha tribe from Macy, NE.  I really enjoyed this part of the morning.  It reminded me of the Pow wow that I had gone to when I was in college.  They did several different dances for us.

Just as they were finishing up we saw the helicopter circle around that was bringing in Astronaut Clayton Anderson.  He is the first and so far only astronaut that was from Nebraska.  

He spoke to us about his dream to become an astronaut.  He applied 15 times before being given the chance to be an astronaut.  He had almost given up on his dream to become an astronaut.  


 He gave us a bit of advice, four things to remember and do.

1. Have a Dream.
2. Persevere.
3. You don't have to be a genius.
4. Be proud of who you are and where you came from.

I really enjoyed listening to him speak.  There is a part of me that really needed to hear this advice.  When there is something that we really want to do, we need to keep on working towards that goal.


This is actually the second time we have seen Clayton Anderson.  The first time was quite a few years ago at Morrill Hall on Astronomy Day.  But even though I had seen him before, it was important for me to see him again.

We continued to keep our eye on the sky as he was speaking.  By now the moon had mostly covered the sun.  But look what else had covered the sun.  We were getting a bit worried that we would be able to see the eclipse at all.  We could only sometimes see the sun through our eclipse glasses due to the clouds.

Clayton Anderson taught us a couple of Russian words.  He had us practice them before even telling us what they meant.  But I had made my guess and told Ella what the words meant before he told us the meaning.  "Net oblakov!"

"No clouds!"

As the moon moved in front of the sun, the lighting was very strange.  Dim and eerie.  It was just off a little bit.

Then the clouds cleared and we could see the sun once more.  It started to get darker and darker.  You could just feel the temperature dropping.  I did not bring a thermometer with me, but they were predicting at least a 10 degree drop in the temp.  I will check the data and see if we really experienced this.  Even if it wasn't 10 degrees it did feel chilly.


Then...

ECLIPSE!

Wow, to say it was amazing means nothing to those who did not experience it.  We were all standing around and looking at this ring of light in the sky that was the only sign of our sun, our source of heat and light.  There were still many clouds in the sky, but we could clearly see the sun.  We were also able to see one of the four planets that should have been visible, the rest were hidden by the clouds.

We are part of an amazing creation.

Nebraska Writer's Guild

So I joined the Nebraska Writer's Guild today.  It has been something that I have been thinking about doing for quite some time.  This past winter at our local wonderful bookstore, there was and event, "Nebraska Authors Book Signing."  So of course I wanted to go to it.  I love the bookstore on any normal day, but when it was going to be filled with authors, well, I wasn't going to miss it.

So we headed over and of course talked to all of the authors there.  One of them suggested joining the NWG to me.  We talked for a long while about writing,  NaNoWriMo, and projects that each of us was working on.  After this I looked into the Nebraska Writer's Guild.  But still wasn't ready to join the ranks of NE writers.

Then at Constellation this spring, the NWG had a table in the dealer room.  I even made a point of going over to them and talking to them.  I took one of their flyers and as I walked away, I planned on joining the group and maybe even going to one of their conferences.  But I didn't go right up to my room and do that.

So finally as I was sorting through a pile of papers I had gathered in my bedroom, I found the flyer that I had picked up at Constellation.  So I grabbed my computer and went to their website.  I decided to look into where the Spring conference would be held and what they might be doing.  There of course was not much information as it is still August.

Now this might seem strange that I didn't look into the Fall conference, but I had just added all of the girls' school activities to my calendar and I was feeling a little bit busy this fall.  Though when there was not much information on the Spring conference, I decided to look at the listing for the Fall one, just to get a feel for what to expect.

This is where things get really crazy.  The fall conference is at the Leadership Center in Aurora.  It is 6 miles from my home.  I wouldn't really have to travel.  And on top of this I know the person who runs the Center, I had her son in Kindergarten last year.

This all seemed to be a sign that I was supposed to get busy.  I needed to become a member and get signed up for this conference.  So I look more into the information about the conference and who was going to be there.

Then at school the next day, I found out that our school teacher's conference is the same weekend.  But if I really push it the school conference is Thursday/Friday, and the NWG conference is Friday/Saturday, I might be able to get them both in.  It will be a crazy couple of days.  But I think I will give it a try.

I have not yet signed up for the conference, but I am sure that I will be doing that in the next few days.  I did however finally become a member of the NWG.

Baby steps, on the path.

Thoughts on ConStellation this year

As always we loved our weekend at the Con.  I am so excited to be able to share this time with my children.  I am sure that none of you could guess this, but one of my favorite parts of the Con is being able to spend time with other writers.  Any time that I do, I feel inspired and maybe even a little bit more brave.  Maybe I could make more effort to send out my words to editors/publishers. This weekend brought a bit of strangeness as people were talking to me about my story.  It still feels very new to me, that feeling of letting someone else read my words.  Add this to compliments and comments of how much the enjoyed reading it, and I hardly know how to respond.

So I guess I am posting this mostly for myself.  Because if it is on the internet somewhere, it had to be true.  But this summer when we are out of school, I am going to  (GOING TO) make effort to send out my stories and novels.  It doesn't matter how scary that is to me.  I am GOING TO do it, right Lisa?

One other thing that made this story and this win special...
The story I wrote for this year's contest came about because of Carrie Vaughn and ConStellation5 in 2014.  She did a writing panel for kids.  Of course I took my kids.  At this panel she had a picture that we brainstormed all sorts of story ideas.  I wrote everything down.  Because I knew that I wanted to continue this as a writing project with my kids.  That summer we all took the ideas we had generated in Carrie's panel and we all wrote our own story.

We could not talk about our stories with each other as I did not want us to influence each other as we wrote.  When I finished I had actually wrote my story twice.  I wrote it from each of the two main characters POV.  This is the story (or at least one of the POV's) was the story that I sent in to the writing contest this year.  So because this story started at ConStellation 5 it is even more exciting to me that it won the contest at ConStellation 8.

Constellation Winners

So last night, Ella and I received the email that we had both won the writing contest for ConStellation this year.  That was super exciting.  Each of us has won this competition other years.  But it is even more exciting this year.  Of course next year Ella will have moved up to the adult bracket.  So our stories will be competing against each other.  This can be avoided if one or the other of us actually publishes enough stories this year to move from the novice to the professional category.

We are really looking forward to ConStellation.  It is a fun time for all of us.

NaNoWriMo 2016

Woo!  I made it.  I didn't know if I would.  Those last 5 days I had a lot of words to make up.  But now, just to finish the novel.  This one has taken me a bit longer than the others.  There has just been a lot going on in my life.  But I am super excited about it.  And guess what, Ella and I sat down and talked about where the story is going.  I think I am getting everything worked out on how to end the trilogy.  :)  At least right now it seems to be a trilogy.  I know I am just a little bit biased.  But I really love this story.  I can't wait to get started writing the next portion of the story.

Final thoughts on our trip

There were several things that I noticed or learned while on our trip.  I thought I would share them here.

1.  I do not like the airport in Chicago.  It was large and full and busy.  To get from domestic to international flights (or international to domestic) you have to leave the secure area, and go back through all of the hassle of taking your shoes off and everything out of your bags.  It was rather annoying.

2.  I was quite surprised that everything in Dublin was in English.  Everyone spoke only English, all of the signs in English.  I wasn't expecting this.

3.  Signs in Wales were in both Welsh and English.  This at times made things confusing as you felt like you should be able to read them, but often it was Welsh that you were looking at and therefore the words were lost on you.

4.  Even with everything and everyone for the most part speaking English, I often found myself standing there in front of something thinking, "What did you say?"  And this was not because of any accent.  I clearly heard the words that they spoke.  I knew what there were, but in that context they conveyed a completely different meaning to me.

 Twice someone told me the phrase half fourteen.  Because of what we were speaking of I knew it was related to time.  But I stood there dumbfounded as I attempted to decode this phrase.  Eventually I realized they meant 2:30.  But of course my first thought was 1/2 of 14 = 7.  But I knew 7:00 was not the time we were talking about.  And besides why would they make me figure out a math problem just to tell me 7:00?  It was really funny that even the second time I heard half fourteen, I stood for a moment thinking "Wow, English is HARD!"  I have come home and now I wonder how they were say, 3:45?  Would that be 3/4 fifteen?  I guess I may never know.

Another very odd 'English' moment happened at the Irish Ferries.  We had missed our ferry and had to wait for the next one.  The man at the desk had assured us it wasn't a problem.  But he had not given or printed us a different ticket.  We had hours to wait so I wasn't too concerned about it until 2 hours later when people started coming in and picking up tickets.  So I went back up to the counter with my old printed ticket to ask about it.  He told me it was fine and I didn't need to worry.  Then he asked if I wanted him to print a new ticket.  I felt better about this and said yes.  As this was printing he held out a hand and motioned to the paper I was holding.  He asked, "Would you like me to cut that off for you?"  I stared at him for a long moment once more thinking "English is hard."  As my brain worked out what he was asking me  He wondered if I wanted him to shred my old ticket paper.  Finally I nodded and gave it to him.

Over and over as we spoke with people we found little difference in the way we used words and had to sort through to find the actual meaning.  And this was with all of us being native English speakers.  Imagine how it is to communicate with someone who speaks English as a second or third language.

5.  Many things are backwards.  It was about the 4th or 5th night of our trip and I was sitting in the bathroom that I had a revelation.  The handle to flush the toilets was on the opposite side as they are in America.  I had felt a slight oddness most times.  But it wasn't until that night that I stood there looking at the toilet and thought, "I know this is the wrong side."  We had a good laugh as I left the bathroom and asked Angie.  She had thought so herself, but thought it was silly and had decided not to ask me.   So roads, the side of the car you drive on and toilet handle are backwards.  I also found myself turning the water on/off in the wrong direction.  I had not check to make sure this was standardly backwards or only some of them were, or even if I was just confused by the workings of things.

6.  I had told Michael and Ann that Wales was like Nebraska.  They seemed unconvinced.  But as I explained to them what I meant they seemed to understand and agree.  Wales did not look much like Nebraska, well, except for all of the green and growing things and the lack of large cities (at least the areas that we were in).  As we drove down the roads, people waved and smiled at you.  It felt like Nebraska, rural and quiet.  Peaceful.

7.  Everyone we actually sat down and talked to was just as interested in Nebraska and where we were from as we were in Wales and Ireland.  We spent a lot of time sharing information.  It was fun to hear of the places that they had been or what they did while in the USA.

8.  We noticed several different accents.  We were not able to tell who was from where, but it was quite noticeable.  Michael had told us that he was from London and you could tell from his accent.   But I was not able to really tell his London accent from Ann's non-London one.

9.  Everyone was very interested in our presidential campaign.  It was strange to see if on the TV and in their newspapers.

10.  And one more thing...  This was not a surprise.  I love BBC.  If I watch TV even here in the USA I tend to enjoy the BBC.  So this was not a surprise to me.  I just wish we could easily get all of the BBC channels.  :)

I am sure there are more things that I could add.  But for the moment I think I will end here.  I loved our trip, even the scary parts.  My thoughts for each of the days of my trip should be posted now.  Of course my favorite pictures are posted in my Facebook album.