A town called Campeche

For most of our trip, we stayed in a town called Campeche. It's south of Merida and a good middle point for exploring mangroves and petenes, but I could have spent days just walking through the colorful streets of this city.

And by colorful, I mean this place has ALL of the colors. This was what I saw when I stepped through the doors of my hotel:


We were told that it was a real "Pirates of the Caribbean" type town (and it has all the Renaissance Festival style pirate themed pubs, restaurants, and knick-knacks to prove it). Back in the days of yore, the place was so put upon by pirates that they protected themselves from invasion by surrounding the bulk of the town in battlements. Many of these battlements still stand tall, which gave the town a very European feel - castles and churros are a delightful combination, I tell you.



Campeche is also something of an uneven city. The ground wasn't scaled when the buildings went up, which seemed to be a point of frustration to those who built the sidewalks. They, at least, are level, which was a sometimes a challenge...


From the top of the battlements we could also see that many of these lovely buildings were not all that they seemed to be. They hide a wilderness inside....I wanted to explore them.


There was a secret place inside one of the battlements with recreation musket rifles and halberds. So, of course, this happened:


And finally, Campeche is home to a cathedral I could not capture well enough with my lens. On our first night in the city, I watched a group of women bless and carry a tall statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe around the square and into the church. She was dressed in blue and waiting inside to receive the many pilgrimaging Guadalupanos.

Uxmal Ruins

I've been a horrible blogger during this trip to Mexico. Not because what I'm doing isn't blog-worthy, but I've been critiquing manuscripts and writing for and getting lost in the week long celebration that is the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. But tonight, it's raining and the festivities are quiet.

I'm staying in an 1800 barracks-turned-hotel in Campeche, Mexico, a World Heritage site. We're leaving tomorrow and I'll be sad to see it go, but I'm looking forward to exploring Merida.

But to backtrack a bit. Here is a photo-essay of my first full day in Mexico, exploring the ruins of Uxmal, a Mayan complex built beginning in 850AD.






Are you kidding? OF COURSE I crawled through that hole. What would Indian Jones do? (PS - There were lots of iguanas in there. Heads poking out of walls four feet above me. Watching me. Creepy is the word you're looking for.)





This is in Campeche, not Uxmal. About thirty yards from the front door of my hotel and no, it didn't look any more real standing right in front of it. 

When dogs listen

At some point this afternoon, Victoria Schwab posted the following video on Twitter:





And while we watched, we noticed Grendel doing this:

November round-up

November certainly has a way of skating out from under me. Everything happens at this time of year. Elections, pumpkin pies, 65% of the people in my life were born in November (including myself), and 82% of the people I know give themselves over to novel-writing fury! It's a wonderfully creative month and I can't love it enough. And then it's gone. *dramatic sigh*

I spent my November tagging along with the NaNo folks, finishing a re-draft of a novel I already loved and needed to love more. Now that it's in the hands of my terribly clever crit partner, I'm reading for several other people and letting myself enjoy the energy of a new idea.

For anyone wondering how my month of no sugar went, I am happy to report it was a complete success. No particulars here, but I am extremely pleased with the experiment. Not only do I feel better now than I did at the beginning (both physically and emotionally), but I came away from it with a much better understanding of how sneaky sugars can be. Seriously, refined and cane sugars are pervasive. It's disturbing, but not insurmountable. To anyone struggling with feeling happy in their bodies, I cannot recommend this experiment enough. More details are in the post I linked to above.

Next week, I'll be off on another day-job adventure. This time we're heading south to the Yucatan Peninsula for 10 days where we'll explore ancient Mayan ruins and tromp through mangrove forests. I'll report as I go, but I've been told that the mangrove forests are the one place on earth anyone recommends wearing 100% DEET.

O_O

Also, I need scuba booties.

I say again, O_O.

Even so, I'm excited. These trips have a way of being utterly amazing (see tag: I love my job for more trips!). These trips also have a way of making me thankful when we return with the same number of people we departed with...

And in other completely unrelated news, I'm still struggling with the idea of mirroring my blog on another platform given LJ's consistent hankiness. I've worked with Blogger before, but didn't fall in love. So, I'm considering WordPress. Anyone have any thoughts about this? Strong opinions welcome.

The Hero of 3AM

There are some experiences you don't really expect to ever have. In fact, there are some you dread. Some you dread so much that you spend a few hours contemplating how you might react or what you should try and remember to do. For example, tessagratton and I drive our car into a body of water and become completely submerged, we know that ONE of us should try and remember the special glass-breaking hammer that lives in the cubby thing between the seats.

But I digress. One of the dreadful things happened last night around 3AM. This is the story of how Tessa saved the known universe.

Tessa was having a normal night of continued aggravation. Her parent's dog was restless and wanted to be let in and out at odd hours. The cats were restless and knocked cans off of counters, enjoying the clatter they made as the fell to the floor. Or perhaps they were trying to attack the dog so recently forced upon them. Regardless, a mostly empty tin of cat food ended up on the floor where the dog could get to it and push it all about using her nose and tongue - she was trying to get all the good out of that tin she could, you see, and in doing so, caused Tessa much angst.

So, Tessa had been up and down more times than she cared to count by the time 3AM rolled around. And with that hour came a new, unidentifiable noise from the back room in the house. For a few moments, she lay in bed, pondering what her own dog could be destroying and whether or not she cared enough to move. She rolled over and there, snug in his bed, was Grendel. The cats were now piled up on the bed and her parent's dog ensconced in the kitchen. There was no immediate explanation for this noise!

Up she got again to investigate and that's when she discovered that the crackling she heard was the sound of flames climbing four feet into the air along our neighbor's home.

"Get up! Get up!" She cried to her household and then to the emergency responders.

And up everyone got! Her household (um, me!) flew out into the night in sweatpants and a bathrobe (o_O) to pound on doors and wake the neighbors. And up the neighbors got, who had been soundly sleeping and unaware of the danger just outside.

Three firetrucks and four police cars arrived and with chainsaws and pounding, soundly defeated the flames.

And that is how Tessa saved the known universe. By HEARING the fire and having the good sense to be aggravated by it.

Now, excuse me while I go write a song about her.

Concerning Puffy Clouds and Kansas

****Interrupting this post before it's even begun to shamelessly promote the short story I posted this week on Tangled Fiction. It's a little on the experimental side of things for me in that it is vaguely SciFi (which, I should note, I LOVE to read, but rarely write). You can read SECOND STAR RUN by clicking........here.****

This weekend, my dad came up for a visit, which was perfect because autumn in Kansas is nothing like autumn in Mississippi and I was ten kinds of excited to get to show off my town in all it's autumnal glory. Our first thought was to take him out to the Konza prairie. This isn't right in our backyard, but it's worth the hour long westward drive because the fields are rolling and all shades of rusty gold and brown. There were going to be buffalo and tallgrasses and puffy clouds the likes of which my dad had never seen. It was going to be grand. He was going to fall into unexpected love with Kansas; which, I might argue, is how everyone who wasn't born here comes to love Kansas - suddenly and with quiet passion.

But then we discovered that KSU was playing MSU at KSU.

And I cried because that meant insurmountable traffic and no buffalo.*

So instead, we decided to take dad somewhere closer to home: The Haskell/Wakarusa/Baker/Lawrence Wetlands (why, yes, there is controversy over what they're called...). I'd been there before, but in the dead heat of summer when the boardwalk could burn the rubber from your shoes and you could barely breathe for the butterflies.** Dad thought it sounded great so away we went!

Only to discover the wetlands aren't so wet in autumn time. In fact, they look no a little bit like the prairie I intended to take him to in the first place. WIN! A beautiful, puffy-clouded win.

Of course, I forgot my fancy camera, so all of my photos were taken on my fancy phone instead. So, I apologize for the photo spam, but I would like to share with you a few of the reasons I love Kansas a la photo essay.

REASON #1
Puffy clouds and cattails



REASON #2
I don't think you know what I mean when I say TALLgrasses
(PS - This is where the water is supposed to be.)



REASON #3
SWAMPS! Seriously, Kansas has all the things!



REASON #4
Labyrinth was filmed here.***



REASON #5
Humor.



*This was an exaggeration.
**So was this.
***.....yeah, this, too.

I am not Harry Potter. (And neither are you.)

This post is about critique and even though I’m going to talk about writing, I don’t think it applies exclusively to writing/writers. Crit is something we all do every single day whether we’re deciding what to wear or deciding where to go for lunch, what to watch on TV, which book to read, what brand of toilet paper to buy. It all comes back to having a critical sense about such things. But I’m going to frame this all around writing because that’s what I’m embroiled in. I’m also going to use Harry Potter, because he's adorable.

I’ve given out a metric ton of crit recently and I’ve received a fair bit as well, so it’s been on my mind. I like to think that I’ve gotten pretty good at delivering critical thoughts in a way that won’t leave someone gnashing their teeth and wailing to the sky, so I’m going to share one key element that I think comes pretty close to being a good and general rule (much as I hate to use the r-word) of critique. Ready for it? Here goes:

It has nothing to do with you.

No, really. The story you’re getting ready to critique? It has nothing to do with you. Absolutely, one hundred and ten percent of nothing to do with you or your life.

It’s easy to forget this. As a reader, we try to connect with characters and situations. We imagine what it would be like to be relegated to life in the cupboard under the stairs as a child, or receiving a prestigious and mysterious invitation to a new school. At the very least, we try to understand how these things could be possible and marvel at the world being built before our eyes. And if we disagree with Harry, we try to understand his motivations. We try to understand why a boy would stay in a home where he was stashed away like a dirty mop.

As a critiquer (critter? critiquest?), our strategy changes. We’re looking at a story with an eye to helping the author shape and polish it until it’s as refined as the Hope Diamond! And this is where the potential for less than stellar crit comes in because this is where the tendency to react like a reader who identifies with a character gets in the way.

So here’s the thing, good critique has nothing to do with how much you do or don’t identify with the character on the page. Good critique has everything to do with how believable you find the character on the page.

Shall I illustrate?

Back to Harry tucked away in the cupboard under the stairs. You didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you, I would NEVER let ANYone stuff me in a small room with spiders and water heaters and a creepy, creaky ceiling. I don’t care if they are related to me, if that had ever happened to me, you bet your sweet tush I’d have blown out the pilot light on that heater, hidden five cans of open tuna beneath the sofa, and hightailed it to anywhere but there. I would have made such a ruckus with the neighbors that the Dursley’s would have been shamed into giving me a proper room and I would have found some friends with moms willing to give me a hot meal once or twice a week. In short, you would never find me in such dire straights as Harry Potter was in at the start of book one.

…

Do you care?

(Pssst – the answer is no.)

Right, you don’t care because what I would or wouldn’t do doesn’t have the first thing to do with what Harry would or wouldn’t do. Much as it may surprise you, I am not Harry Potter.

Neither are you.

I know, I know, it sucks. Get over it.

You’re not Harry Potter. You’re not Bella Swan. You’re not Katniss Everdeen. But you believe these characters on the page. So the question is why?

I’ve seen more than a little crit based solely around the “I” of the reader. And I think the reaction of the reader can absolutely have bearing on the believability of the character, but critique isn’t a matter of pointing to something and saying “I don’t believe this because I would never do that.” Critique, actual critique, is following that impulse through to the "why."

What does that mean? It means we're going back to Harry under the stairs. If JK were to ask me for crit on the very beginning of the first book (this isn’t a call I expect, by the way), I wouldn’t do it by putting myself in Harry’s shoes. If I want to be worth my salt in crit, I would think super, super hard about why I reacted the way I did to that scene. I might instead tell her that reading that passage left me wondering about the resources available to Harry outside of the home (of course, I might also concede that my heart was bleeding for Harry so this is really a small issue). I might point to something about the Dursleys that made them appear too sympathetic. Or I might simply say that the tone was too dry, too precious, or too fill-in-the-blank.

There is a place for the “I” in critique. It’s all one person’s opinion, afterall. But it doesn’t belong in the story.

So that story you’re getting ready to crit? Remember this: You are not Harry Potter.