Tag: #NewYork

  • Research and Sticking to Reality

    There was a silly question which I posed to my wife yesterday in regard to the novel. She had walked in the door from walking the dog, and I said to her, “So don’t read into this, but what do you know about getting a divorce in New York?”

    I am lucky to have my wife, who has fielded strange questions from me for years, so she didn’t even bat an eye at this one. “Not a whole lot,” she said, “but I know they suck.”

    And with that, I am forced to do research.

    As we are all stuck at home, I have started reading on the internet, and going to legal sites to discover the ins and outs of DIY divorces, and lawyers, and the fact that no one is happy about getting divorced.

    The worst part is that by starting to do the most basic of research, I have already discovered some statements that I had the protagonist make about the divorce process, are factually wrong, and not how it works in New York. I made the note, and when I start rewriting, I will incorporate this information in. Though, working this information in will affect a small subplot in the novel, which will force me to figure out how to adjust the subplot, or just cut it.

    And then I had a thought; if I am writing fiction, then I can just make up whatever I want. Who says that I have to follow how the real-world works? This isn’t a documentary, but when I write, I have this compulsion that I have to stick everything into reality. If New York State has a 60-day waiting period before a divorce is finalized, then I can’t write about a situation where that doesn’t exist.

    Right?

    I have also heard it said by a writer friend that you should only do research after you complete the first draft. “Don’t let facts get in your way from telling a good story.”

  • NYC Schools Delayed, And a Normal Schedule?

    Things have changed yet again in NYC when it comes to the public schools. Looks like the Mayor and the teachers have agreed to delay the start of school a week, and in person classes for 10 days. I think this is the right decision, as far as I hear from my teacher friends, the schools are not physically ready for students, and this delay will help get things ready. This doesn’t change our plans; we are going to continue with the remote learning for our kid, and then see if she will rejoin her class in November. Hopefully, this will make everything safer for the teachers, staff, and students.

    The wife’s new job is planning to open up their offices in October. The rule they will be following is that only 50% of the staff can be onsite at one time, which will mean that she will be in the office 2 days out if the week.

    Looks like we are slowing beginning to see what our Fall schedule will be like, and this also feels like for the first time we have a glimmer of the tiniest speck of a shard of light of having a small amount of normalcy.

    Not that I am holding my breath.

    But it would be nice.

  • Day Trip Out of New York

    I decided that I was going to take the weekend off from writing anything, with the exception of journaling. That lead to an exceptionally lazy Saturday, where none of us did anything. As for Sunday, we planned a hike outside of New York City, at the Great Hollow Nature Preserve in Connecticut. We went looking for a place that had an “easy skill level” that was kid friendly, but still had enough of a hike to make us feel like we had accomplished something. Great Hollow checked all the boxes, and we had a wonderful afternoon of hiking, which ended with a picnic on the lawn.

    As we are now in the middle of August, the last month of Summer before school starts, the idea that we will be able to get away for a vacation is no longer even remotely a possibility. To make the best out of this situation, we are planning more day trips upstate, and seeing if we can find a few more easy trails to tackle. This has been the third time this Summer that we took a short excursion to get out to a park or preserve to do some very easy hiking, and it has been a welcome relaxation for us. 2020 has thrown us so many curveballs, car trips to break up to monotony of being stuck at home have helped.

  • Scheduling Writing Time in a Pandemic

    There might be a lot to unpack in this statement, but I have the feeling that kids will not physically go to school in New York for the first few months of the school year. My guess is that there will at least be two months of remote learning, and that’s if a safe and effective vaccine can be developed. (But this is a topic for another blog.) With that said, I don’t think I will have a few hours to write every day, as I will need to be the kid’s teacher for the foreseeable future.

    So, I need to look for the time in our schedule to make writing happen.

    Right now, I’m getting about two hours in on a perfect, everything breaks my way, kind of day. I can get about 30 to 45 minutes to journal in the morning, when me and the kid have some park time. The kid used to take a daily nap, but that has morphed into “Quiet Playtime” in the kid’s room, and depending on how much I have to clean the kitchen up after lunch, I can fit 30 minutes of blog time. Finally, the kid has an hour of free tv time, which I sit with her and monitor, and that is when I can fit in an hour to work on other things. I used to try and write in the evening, but that’s the only time me and the wife get to have some time together, and that’s pretty important to us. Since rarely does anything break my way, I’m lucky if I can get about 45 minutes to an hour day.

    What complicates this even more is that my wife is working from home, so the family desk is now her’s, and I haven’t found a good landing place to work in the apartment.

    So, as I look to the next month and Fall in general, I am trying to figure out what our schedule will be so everyone can get what they need, and I can still fit in a little more than 2 hours a day to write.

  • Playgrounds and The Kid’s Mental Health

    Playgrounds and The Kid’s Mental Health

    Yesterday, I talked about how the virus may affect us and our kids in the future. I think about this often, especially when me and the kid head to the playground.

    When the playgrounds were closed in the City, it was awful for all of us. We tried to stay active by going for walks twice a day. The one nice benefit of this was that we got to explore all the streets in our neighborhood, but nonetheless it was not a substitute for a playground. Every time we walked through a park, and the kid laid eyes on the playground, I would get the question of, “When can we go back in there?” There was never an acceptable answer.

    With the lack of physically activity, and having no social contact with other kids, my daughter was starting to act out, and undertake behaviors she had never demonstrated before. She was more prone to scream, argue, throw things, and have temper tantrums, the likes she hadn’t done at least since she was three. We had been lucky in having a child that loved to sleep, and went to bed with no issues, but since April, she has been fighting going to bed, and getting up several times a night.

    Now that playgrounds have been open for almost a month now, it has made this situation more tolerable for the kid. Her behavior has gotten better, and she is generally sleeping solidly again. There are still flair ups, from time to time. I am sure that with the kid having a chance to be around other kids, and act out her frustrations and fears, that she is finding ways to cope with all of this stuff. It has been our one glimmer of hope in this season of unpredictability.