Last Post Until August

As many of you know, tomorrow I am leaving for Clarion West, a six-week intense writing workshop in Seattle. There are eighteen students and six instructors: John Kessel , Karen Joy Fowler , Elizabeth Bear, Nalo Hopkinson , David G. Hartwell , and Rudy Rucker.

I'm nervous, but excited. (Really, at this moment, I'm singing a song called, "Nervous, But Excited.")* The lovely packet of info we've gotten suggested that I cut myself from all other human contact for the duration of the workshop. Okay, it doesn't say that verbatim, but I do know that I spend a large amount of time on the Internet, a block of time that I won't have at my disposal while I'm there. So from June 19th through August 10th I will not be available via e-mail, nor will I be able to respond to comments on my blog/Facebook/Twitter/ect. (Yes, I'm aware that the workshop ends on July 31st. I need my travel and recouping days.)

While I won't be making longer blog posts over the summer, I will keep up with my microblog posts and well as my status. (It's a good ten-second break when I'm stuck.) I hope you'll all continue to put up with me during that time. Pray for my sanity when you get the chance.

See you all again in August!

*The author of the post apologizes for the bad SNL reference and blames it purely on her lack of sleep at the time of this writing.

Finding the Right Word

You know, um, that thing, what's it called, when you're looking for a word and you don't know what it is? I have that problem constantly. The word's on the tip of my tongue, and I can't get it out. I keep thinking of other words that have a similar meaning, or that sound like the word I'm looking for, but they aren't it. Anyone have any good strategies for that?

So far this is the only thing that's helped me: I create a new document and just start writing down all the words that I know aren't what I'm looking for, but I'm thinking of anyway. Most of the time, when I see them all listed in front of me, the right word finally hits. This is a list I came up with recently when I wanted to describe someone having trouble breathing. I knew I wanted it to fit into the phrase "her ______ breaths."

This is the list that I generated:
effort
heaving
struggling
heating
fought for
labored

Clearly, "heating" had nothing to do with anything, I probably only thought of it because it sounded like "heaving," but I wrote it down anyway. Finally got to the word "labored" after six tries.

Feel free to share your strategies for getting that right word in the comment section. I'd love to hear them!

So now Amazon has a bigger, more expensive Kindle. Not encouraging me to buy. Make one that costs less than my laptop and I'm interested.