Author Archives: Tom Harold

Metallic return

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Finally.  FINALLY!  I’m working on sculpture again.  It’s not much, but it’s more progress than I’ve made, more work than I’ve been able to do, in over a month, and, man, does it ever feel good!  I’m coming up from the basement with sooty black marks in random places on my face, and my fingers look slightly blackened and they smell like metal.  Life is good.

This is the top gear for my chain lift.  Getting things to line up and track properly could prove to be a challenge that will have me cursing and swearing on future blogs, but I trust you’ll all get a big kick out of that anyway.  The chain is called ladder chain.  I found it on the web.  The gear is out of a windup clock, because I thought the gears that you could buy to fit the chain perfectly were ugly, being plain black plastic.  This is way more hip.  It will likely be the source of much cursing (aforementioned), but you can’t tell me that it looks unbelievably boss.  The bracket holding the whole mess is a cut up and bent harmonica reed plate.  I think I found that one in the kitchen, or maybe the bathroom…or maybe…it was on my dresser.  I don’t know.  It’s serving a better purpose now.

I hope to have more RBS niftiness to blog about as the weeks go by, but progress on these things can be slow.  Tonight I found out that I need to get the shaft for the lower gear turned down at one end, and I don’t own a machine that can do that.  Kind of a problem.  We’ll see how I figure that out.  Much of the immediate work will be getting the lift positioned and mounted properly.  It’s not the most interesting work, but there’s no way around it.  I’m just happy to have my hands on metal once again.

We do it all, apparently.

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Scene: Tom sitting at desk at work.  (Yes, I do go to work.)
*ring! ring!*
“Thanks for calling Service-Oriented Finance Establishment.  This is Tom.  How can I help you?”
“Yeah, Tom, I need to do a price check.”
(Tom becomes intrigued, plays along.)  “Okay.”
“I need to know what your cheapest forty gallon water heater is.”
“Well, sir, we are a Service-Oriented Finance Establishment, so I don’t have any information on that.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.  I must have called the wrong number.  Thanks.”
“No problem.  Bye.”

This is only mildly amusing taken by itself.  It slides into intruiging when you consider the fact that we get these sorts of calls quite often.  I don’t mean “quite often” as in at least once a week.  I mean we probably get six or eight of these a week.  Many times they only say “Oh, sorry, I got the wrong number,” or they hang up on me (love that one, by the way, thanks).  However, the scant number of times that the caller has identified the nature of the call leads me to wonder just what in the hell people are using for a phone directory.

Last week I got a call for a doctor’s office.  After I identified myself the woman said, “Okay, my name’s Idont Listen, and I need to speak to Doctor Wallace.  I’m not feeling good.”
A few weeks ago I got about a DVD.  After I identified myself a second time the caller said, “Oh, this isn’t Walmart?”
We used to get calls for transmissions and engines.  That one was actually kind of frequent, so I was able to figure it out.  After I got the supposed number they were dialing, I looked it up and found out that our 800 number was one digit different from a transmission and engine company that sold stuff on eBay.  People were simply hitting one digit instead of another.  Before I figured that one out it was confusing, especially when the first or second time I answered one of those, a guy asked about an engine for sale.  For a split second I wondered how he knew what was in my garage.  Then I wanted to say, “Well, I’ve got this old Ford 351 that I’m thinking of getting rid of.  It’s a Cleveland block.  You need it?”

I have this feeling there’s a web site out there somewhere that directs anyone looking for any phone number for any business anywhere in the U.S. to dial our 800 number.  Next time you look up a number on the web and call a business, don’t be surprised if I answer the phone.

Words, Wonderful Words!

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Just a few short weeks ago I was introduced by way of Editor Unleashed to writer Quinn Cummings’ blog, The QC Report, Notes from the Underwire. I became an instant fan. I’m not a former award-winning child star, nor am I a wife with a husband and small girl (not that I ever aspired to either of those), yet her writing appeals to me as much for its subject matter as for her treatment of it. She writes about the every day foibles, frustrations, and momentary near-triumphs of being a parent, a wife, and simply of being herself.

As she says in her initial post: “…my life, right now, can be summed up by a mathematical equation: PP+ 20m= PH(e)2.
That is, any Private Pride I feel about my ability to run my life, take care of my child, attend to my business or behave in a way that could be described as competent will be followed, in less than twenty minutes, by a Public Humiliation that is equal to the Private Pride squared.”

Not only does she write with a sense of humorous self-deprecation that is all too easy to identify and laugh along with, she does so while displaying what is, for me, an enviable vocabulary. (I shake my fist at the words that have somehow fled my noggin’ over the past fifteen or twenty years.)

It should go without saying that I love words, and Mrs. Cummings’ blog is a trove of wonderfully playful verbiage. It got to the point where I started writing certain ones down that I admired. In the course of a day I came up with some favorites:

riparian – having to do with the banks of a river or stream (Awesome! Far better than “a river with banks.” Blah.)
travertine – a type of striated limestone, also used to refer to marble (Lovely)
ziggurat – a terraced temple, Sumarian in origin (When used to describe a plate of food – hilarious!)
picayune – of small value, trifling (This big word makes the small sound even smaller. Love!)
Dorothy Parker – sharp-witted U.S. writer of the 20th century, known for her drinking as well
Sparkletts – bottled water (yeah, had to look that up)
Dorothea Lange – photographer noted, in part, for her depictions of life during the Dust Bowl era in American History (The visual counterpoint to Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.”)
traditional Ixtec – I wasn’t able to get an exact answer on this one. It’s obviously of an ancient culture or race, but it eludes me.
mendicant – beggar. (What an outstanding word for folks who come to your door at Halloween! I’d forgotten all abou this word!)
gelt – slang for money (Used by her as reference to Halloween candy. Literal and verbal sweetness!)
ecumenical – referring to the Christian church as a whole (Yes, being Catholic, I should know that off the top of my head – and now I do.)
brio – displaying enthusiasm for (I love this word!)

Mrs. Cummings continually tosses about such words with what appears to be such ease and comfort, if she weren’t so much fun to read, I’d dislike her intensely. Seeing as how I’m not one to hate another simply due to their awesomeness, though, she’s safe from any of my literary ire. I’ll save that for people like James Frey.

While it pains me somewhat to admit that I’m not familiar with all of these words, and while I continually say to myself, “Where did she learn all these?!” I can’t help but enjoy every one of them. The good that comes out of all of this pertains directly to what I just watched Stephen King say on a short Youtube video the other day, and what numerous other writers say repeatedly: You have to read in order to write. Even if I’m not creating much at the moment, at least I’m absorbing a few things.

Check out Mrs. Cummings’ blog if you are in need of some humor and some fine writing. I should note that she has a book coming out in January of ’09 as well. I think I might have to make a purchase.

It’s Just Not Working Out Right Now

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This will be my second attempt at a post.  I can’t seem to get much written lately.  I can’t seem to get much of anything creative done lately, actually.  When Awesome Reader Olivia asked about why I hadn’t blogged, I told her what was going on and why, and she said, “Why don’t you blog about that?”  Since the situation is really annoying, and it’s been bothering me, I’m giving up on appearing competent and writing about “How This is Just not Working Out Right Now.”

I’ve created almost nothing in the last nineteen days.  In November I did almost nothing except work on my novel for NaNoWriMo.  I scheduled one hour during that month to work on one of my sculptures.  Other than that, it was all writing.

When NaNo came to a close I took a deserved mini-break, but did write a couple thousand words during the first week of December.  I think I sat down one Saturday and hammered some out, or maybe it was that Sunday at the coffee shop with the girl reading Wroblewski.  Anyway, I wrote then, but that’s all I’ve done on the novel since November ended.

Not long after NaNo ended something funny happened to my right hand.  I’m not at all sure what I did or how I did it, but I strained something in my hand, and now I can’t do anything too strenuous with it.  I can still pick up stuff, type, eat – all that good stuff – but I can’t grip very well.  It hurts to do that.  Feels like a muscle strain.  I can’t practice guitar, and that’s been bugging the hell out of me.  I can’t really do any sculpture work, because I’m right handed and that pursuit is all about the firm grasping of tools and wire, so there’s been no sculpture for at least two weeks.

I think the guitar and the sculpture stuff has backed me into a corner on the writing as well.  It’s just one big pile of suck, and I’m not doing so well at getting out of it.  And for those wonder, no, I haven’t gone to the doctor.  Are you mad?  That might help!  Actually, it seemed like such a small thing when it happened that I just figured I’d leave it alone and not stress it for a while and it would go away.  I’ve actually had this happen before in the past and it has gone away.  This seems to be lingering, however, and I’m not sure if part of it is just the fact that these days I’m doing a lot more that requires hand-work, or that maybe I’m just better at taking care of myself these days and I’m not apt to just ignore it and do whatever I want anyway.

I’m debating the doctor visit.  I don’t like doctors.  Actually, that’s not true.  I don’t mind doctors at all, it’s the taking time off from work and spending half a day sitting around in an office only to be told, “Yeah, there’s not much we can do about it.  You’ll just have to avoid using it as much as possible.” that really bugs the crap out of me.  This seems to happen to me most of the time when I go to the doctor.

Perhaps there will be some writing done this weekend.  I really am missing the guitar and sculpture work, however.  I had a thought before Christmas to make some ornaments for family from copper wire, and I can’t even really do that.  Not fun.

At least there’s a blog post up.  I’ve not been 100% taken out of the game.

On Winning NaNoWriMo, (Not) Finishing, and The Artist’s Way

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Yesterday I posted a horrendously long, rambling, and only vaguely coherent comment on someone else’s blog.  I’m not telling you whose, because it was that bad, or at least it seems that bad.  Really, the length is what’s embarrassingly astounding about it, and it just looks heinous.  As a too-kind soul who reads that blog as well as mine immediately pointed out, I had not even put an entry up on my own blog in quite some time.  In an effort to drain myself of whatever wordery may be mucking up manky sponge that is my brain, I present to you what will likely be a long, rambling, and only vaguely coherent blog post.  Enjoy?

NaNoWriMo has come and gone in its 30-day fourish of literary madness and caffeine.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, except for the part where I didn’t reach the end of my novel.  Oh, I hit the word count all right.  I nailed that fifty thousand word minimum with a big ten-penny spike on the 18th of the month, so winning the challenge was not really a problem.  Of course, in my head I figured that I’d battle out my novel with myself until somewhere around 50K, and I’d reach the finish line, exhausted but exalted at the end of the month.

No.

At 10K I wondered if I’d be able to make it to fifty. 
At 20K I realized I had finally actually started writing the real story (plot). 
At 35K I started to get jazzed that I was really going to make it to 50K!
40K…starting to get concerned that a major character still hasn’t shown up yet.
45K – realizing there’s no way on God’s green earth I’m ever going to wrap this up in five thousand words.
50K – pretty elated, for maybe thirty minutes.  Keep writing.
60K – realize that another ten thousand wasn’t going to do it either.  When will this end?!  Attempt to get through major plot points and scenes as quickly as possible.
70K – Nope, that’s not gonna be enough either.  Start furiously writing extremely shortened scenes in attempt to finish all major points by November 30th.
74K – Having written 2K in two hours, have a major revelation about the plot and several characters while brushing my teeth.  Immediately rinse mouth, return to laptop, and spend 30 minutes typing up the story I should have been writing 74K ago.  Feel elated.  Fall asleep.
76,884 – Written on November 29th whereby REALLY finishing it wasn’t seeming so dire or possible anymore.  Start forming plan to complete novel anyway following existing plot so I can say “I did finish a novel,” and then immediately start rewriting entire book all over again with the “real, good” idea that came at 74K.

I learned a lot, kids.  A ton.  A literary Spruce Goose full of information was handed to me via many mornings, afternoons, evenings, nights, and full weekend days of writing.  For one, writing takes up lots of your time!  (This is a newsflash you’ll surely pass on to anyone you meet in the next thirteen seconds.)  For B, a lot of the hard work of “crafting” a novel isn’t sitting there in front of the screen/paper trying to find the perfectly exact awesome way of describing the trees in Bloomington, Indiana on a fall day, or thinking up the perfect synonym for the “red” of a girl’s hair.  It’s actually going, “What?  They just met that dude, and now they figured out this thing, and it would be perfect if they met this other dude tomorrow, but they can’t run into other dude until Tuesday, and it’s Saturday.  What the hell do I have them do for three days?”  It’s also about sitting there going, “Uh, why did he just do that?  He wasn’t supposed to do that!  I didn’t even know he was going to do that.  Now all this other stuff has to happen, and I have to write about all this other stuff, and I really, really, really just want to GET. ON. WITH. THE. STORY!

Ah, the wisdom of the “been there, done that” scenario.  Now I have said wisdom.  What other lovely wisdom awaits me?  Rewrite wisdom?  Finishing the novel wisdom?  Writing the climax wisdom?  Figuring out how to tie up all the loose ends at the denoument wisdom?

Stupid wisdom.

What else has happened?  Let’s see, I finished the Artist’s Way.  Big yay.  I mean it.  I’m not overly overjoyed right now, but yay.  I wrote a lot.  A ton.  I hand wrote 270 pages worth of journaling.  This does not include writing that was required for the Weekly Tasks, or the Affirmations and Blurts stuff.  I used up an entire full-sized, college-ruled notebook and started on a second one before I was done.  Now I’m not done.  You are challenged to do at least the Morning Pages and Artist Dates for the next ninety days – three more months.  I’m on Day Four.  We’ll see how this goes.  The Artist’s Way got me a repainted kitchen door, a finished rolling ball sculpture, a trip to Bloomington, a trip to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, some self-decorated pottery, a look at art work from the Ming Dynasty, a bunch of colored name signs for friends and family, a (nearly) finished novel…how long can this list get?  I’ll stop there.  I got a lot out of it, more of which I plan to blog about, since I already spent tons of time taking the pictures of it.  It’ll be out of sequence, but I hope you enjoy them just the same.

I hope that cures me of some of my apparent need to talk about everything and nothing all at the same time on other people’s blogs.  I hope.

Hitting the Wall at Two Thousand Words per Hour

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Okay, so two thousand words per hour is me on a really good day, but I have done it.  The hitting the wall thing has really happened.  I’m still hard at work on my novel fro NaNoWriMo.  I started to get stuck last night, and this morning I’ve no idea how to move forward with my story.  I wrote out a bunch of thoughts, and they all seem to dead end into really stupid things.  I’m not sure what to do at this point.  I was going to write all day today, but I don’t know what to write.

On a happier note, on Monday, 11/24 I am going to be published on Jamie Grove’s blog How Not to Write: The Art of Writing Without Writing. Given that I wrote it on Thursday last week, it should sound much more positive than I feel at this moment.

Here’s hoping that I figure out what to do at some point in the next few hours, at least enough to get another scene written.

Thanks to Olivia and Genevieve for your recent blog comments.  It’s nice to hear from other writers working through the process.

NaNoWriMo – 50K and nowhere near the finish line

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A bit stumped today, kids.  I reached the official NaNoWriMo “win” goal of fifty thousand words yesterday.  That’s great.  That’s awesome.  That’s actually incredibly in line with my goal to have 50K written before Thanksgiving so that I’d be pretty much done with the novel and wouldn’t stress about it over the holiday.

Except I’m not pretty much done.  I don’t even know if I’m half done.

I do know that what I said in the last post is true: it seems like my story started taking off around 40K or something like that, maybe it peeked in around 30K.  I don’t know, but there’s a good bit of story going on now, and I actually have all these little plot points that have to be written, events that have to happen, major s*** to go down, if you know what I mean.

Looks like my plans for a carefree holiday are not what they were, although I don’t have to choose to worry and obsess about it.  I’m going to do my best to just take it as it comes, accepting that I can only do what I can do every day, and that somehow I will finish it, like I finished the sculpture and raced at Bonneville.  I can do this stuff.  Somehow, I can do this.

I’ve been graciously asked to do a guest blog post over at Jamie Grove’s How Not to Write blog.  There will be a much more well thought out blog on this subject up there in a few days.  I’ll post the link here when it happens.  I’m rather excited about it.  It’s a cool opportunity.

NaNoWriMo – Screaming Toward 50K and No End in Sight

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Holy cow, dudes!  I hit forty-five thousand words for NaNoWriMo today!  Gadzooks!  Call the papers!  Alert the military, or at least a comely lass with a penchant for reading horrid first drafts.  I’m deep into the home stretch on this bad boy, and it feels mighty good!  (For evidence of the feelings of mighty-good-ness, see the multiple exclamation-pointed sentences afore.)

During the past week’s period of time I’ve largely been doing writing in my free time and very little else, although I did find time to fit in a little fashion consulting to an elderly black gentleman at the thrift store yesterday.  I still think he should have taken home the Big Johnson Speed Shop T-shirt, but he opted for the Golf with a Weiner one.  Hey, I can only make suggestions.  I can’t help it if people don’t listen.

Yesterday was a sonic buzz of activity at Mo’Joe’s coffee house where I (kinda) buckled down with a bunch of other writers and (talked) wrote.  The last of my word smith comrades departed the land of caffeine and more caffeine at about 7pm, whereupon I took it upon myself to move to another table, pop in the ear buds, and write without stopping (much) until 11pm.  That last push got me another three thousand words added to the day’s total, bringing me to a grand total of 4K for the day, and an overall total of 38 thousand and some.  I’d wanted 40K by the end of the day, but that was plenty good to sleep on.

Today I was up early enough to get all my early morning journaling out of the way and be done with church and laundry and guitar practice by 12:45pm.  Without pausing to see if there was anything else that could possible allow me to procrastinate further, I threw my laptop in the bag, grabbed the Hohner 64 Chromatic, and headed for Monon Coffee Company with thoughts of getting absolutely as close to 50K as I possibly could.

Fifteen minutes later I sat before my laptop with an excellent hot green tea chai latte and fretted about where the hell to go next.  I fretted a bit more.  I sipped tea.  I fretted a bit more.

“If you type something, you’ll be writing,” I thought.  “You can figure out if it really makes sense later, but if you don’t friggin’ start writing, you’re not going to be writing.”

Faced with this rock-solid and irrefutable logic, I began.

Six hours and a cafe latte later I came up for air: 45 thousand and some couple hundred words.

In the past two days I’ve written over eleven thousand words.  My brain feels kinda squishy right now, but I’m okay.  I’m pretty happy.  If I wanted to take my time and finish on the 30th, I’d only need to do about 311 words a day for the remainder of the month.

The joke of this is, I’ve almost hit 50K and the story is just finally starting to take off.  It’s looking like it may take 100K (or more?) to help these kids figure out just what they’re doing in my story.  I…hope…I survive the experience.

Better go.  I’ve got some writing to do before bed.

NaNoWriMo Go, Go, Go!

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NaNoWriMo - the well of insanity and glee

I’ve been busy, kids, very busy, and this is just a quick post to try and keep mildly updated here. National Novel Writing Month is upon us. The challenge: write a 50K-word novel between the dates of 11/1 and 11/30. That’s 1,667 words per day. This evening I hit 23,502, that’s *so* friggin’ close to where I’d like to be. Ideally, I wanted to hit 25K by day 10, so that I’d be on track to hit 50K by day 20, which I’m trying to do, because I know Thanksgiving will be busy around here for me.

I’ve been doing my Artist Dates, still doing all the other The Artist’s Way stuff, and, yes, it is REALLY keeping me busy!

Tomorrow I have the day off work, so I’m going down to Bloomington, Indiana to soak up the college vibe and do a little general poking about and visiting as some background work for my novel-in-progress. Should be good times. Then, in the evening it’s back up to Indy for another write-in with fellow WriMos at a coffee shop, and then, kids, THEN we shall see TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND WORDS BAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Oh, sorry, got a little carried away there. (25K! Halfway!)

Ahem. Good evening.

Great Cut Out ’08 – Setting 61 Heads On Fire

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First off, it’s Sunday just before 1pm, and I’m amazed that I can turn and look out the window into the front yard and all 61 of those dudes are STILL sitting on my lawn. I live in a great neighborhood. There have been at least a couple of parties on my block this weekend with various drunken zombies (and slutty policewomen and Little Red Riding Hoods) running around, and yet my little orange lawn ornaments remain untouched. Pretty cool.

I’ll see if I can’t keep this short. We’re here for the pictures, aren’t we? I got home Friday from work and immediately…took a short nap. I was exhausted from staying up late and carving the last three pumpkins the night before, plus cutting some wood for the display.

My friend Cat was up from Terre Haute on business, and she stopped in just moments after I woke up from my nap and we set about getting things in order. It took a while, because it’s pretty hard to pick up and carry more than one jack o’ lantern at a time, so we each made about fifteen trips off the porch to the front yard. We got them all set up, and then the little neighbor kids came by for candy, and the littlest ones (maybe three years old) started teetering and tottering between all of them picking off the lids when they saw Cat doing it. “I help!” one little boy kept saying. It was cute as all get-out, but I was really worried he was going to fall headfirst into a row of six or eight of them. His dad rescued him and the gourds before damage was done.

After about an hour we had them all set up and the candles were installed. Here’s a little tip for those of you contemplating such an undertaking: get some of those long-nosed butane lighters. Funks was a genius and a life-saver last year when he showed up with two that he’d purchased just because, well, I guess he thinks a lot further ahead than I do. Those things saved us probably twenty minutes of matches, burned fingers, and lots of cussing.

Finally, all 61 were lit, and we got the lids put back on, stepped back, and, well, I’ll let the pics tell the rest of the story. (all clickable)

61 Jack O\' Lanterns!

A blaze of Halloween glory!

This one is leering. Always good to have some leering on Halloween.


My friend Tina did the one on the left, and Meg did the one on the right.

This is one of mine. I’m a fan of big eyes and large mouths. They show up really well in the dark.

I did this one, but I got very good advice from a couple of people on the teeth. I was going to carve them in reverse of how I did it here, but it looks much better this way. Thanks, guys!

This looks like an Ed Roth cartoon to me.

Tim P. did this one. It got a lot of compliments. Andrew told me that in the middle of this one there was an, “Oh no. I don’t know if I can pull this off” moment. Obviously he overcame his obstacles.

Joe’s wife Kathy did this one. She was the first person to ask for toothpicks. The detail was awesome.

Me without coffee.

Great capturing of expression here.

One of Tim P’s specialties is the winking eye. It’s becoming his trademark.

I absolutely love the eyes on this one. I never would have conceived this design myself. My buddy Squee is responsible here.

Jem, my truly outrageous friend did this one. Much detail. Excellent curves on the eyes and eyebrows.

Squee did the one on the left with the three eyes. I once again envy her eyeball majesty. I don’t recall who did the one on the right, but it was really friggin’ creepy once it was lit.

Me with all my kids. Woohoo! Pulled it off again this year!

The morning after. You can get a good look at the finished project, and see some that I didn’t get shots of, or shot too poorly to post. Folks really were outstanding with their contributions of time and money (I didn’t pay for all these myself). Mom and pop were great for getting the pumpkins for me. My friends were wonderful for all their creative ideas, for putting time into it, for being enthusiastic, for being positive and having a good time, for helping me clean up(!!!!!), for showing up multiple times (especially if I goofed and misinformed them of the schedule of events somehow), and for just being the cool people they are.

Thanks again to all of you who participated! You contributed to an outstanding and fulfilling piece of fun and creativity. I do hope you will all return armed and ready next year. I think we’re gonna do ninety, so I’ll need the help!