Author: Katie L. Carroll (Page 135 of 142)

Observations on the Train to NYC

March 20, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

I recently headed down to NYC for one of the SCBWI Writers of Lower Fairfield County Editor Evenings (mine is the middle grade novel…and how great is it that I’m referred to as an author?). As usual, I took the hour-and-a-half train ride into Grand Central.

I often go into the city with the girls. (Here’s a kind-of-old picture of “the girls” at the Hard Rock Cafe. I’m the cute one!)

When I’m with the girls, the train rides fly by. We usually have so much catching up to do that the ride is over before we’ve run out of things to say. The focus is on us and not the world that streams past the windows.

However, I took this most recent trip alone. I brought a book, but the scenes through the glass grabbed my attention. It wasn’t the beauty of life that interested me; it was the real scenes of life that caught my imagination. I appreciate that Metro North Railroad takes a direct route from point A to point B and doesn’t try to send the train through the most picturesque areas.

My little tour of the wrong sides of the track gave me much to think and dream about. And I was able to do it from the safety of my train seat. Here are some of things I saw:

A beat up compact car (possibly a Hyundai Accent) sits in a parking lot behind some kind of apartment complex. It’s purple, and not a deep night-sky kind of purple, more of a dark lavender kind of purple (not my first choice for a car color). The back quarter panel on the passenger’s side is all banged up, and the back tire on that side is flat. I wonder what story that sad little car has to tell? An adventure? A tragedy?
A young boy hangs out with his friends at a school playground. He’s waving to the train, or maybe he’s waving at some other object in the same eye line. He’s got a big grin on his face. Is the smile sweet? Mischievous? What do his friends think of his enthusiasm?
Three cops cars are parked side-by-side in the back parking lot of some large store. They’re hidden from the road and no other cars are near them. What are they doing there? Slacking off? Planning some big bust?

There are so many stories being told when you take a few minutes to look out the window.

You’re Not Alone in Feeling Like It’s All Been Done Before

March 8, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

One problem I often run across while writing (have I mentioned that I’m a writer?) is that I feel like there’s nothing new to write about. I’ll be sitting with my laptop, type, type, typing away, and I’m feeling great. I think I’m brilliant! Can I possibly come up with any more awesome ideas?

Then a few days later I reread a book and think Hmmm. Why does this feel so familiar? I must be remembering the last time I read this book. No. It’s not that. It reminds me of something I’ve read more recently. Oh, right. My moment of inspired originality. Only my writing is not nearly as good as this is. So much for having awesome ideas. This isn’t even a new complaint among writers…even my lamentations are rip-offs.

To console myself I’ve come up with a list of expressions that are disgustingly overused right now. I narrowed the list down to just three (if I didn’t cut myself off there, who knows when I would’ve stopped). These three in particular make me very angry; so angry in fact I think if I hear any of them one more time, I might just implode.

3. Shabby Chic–I’m all for a good oxymoron, but this is one of those terms that everybody’s been using to describe everything. My car is an old junker, but I covered the seats in velour, so now it’s shabby chic. (No, it’s just a piece o’ crap!) I’d call my style shabby chic because I decorated my house with a bunch of stuff I bought at a tag sale. (No, you’re just cheap and now your house is full of a bunch o’ crap that other people discarded!)

2. Dark Horse–From American Idol to NASCAR, commentators are predicting that every middle-of-the-road competitor is a dark horse. A true dark horse is racehorse, candidate, athlete, etc… that really comes from nowhere to win. By definition you can’t predict a dark horse, so stop trying to do it!

1. It is what it is–This has to be the most meaningless expression ever created. It literally has no meaning. And every reality TV star that’s getting his 15 minutes of fame is using it. Just typing this phrase caused me pain. The next time I hear someone say this, I won’t implode. I will explode into a million bloody pieces all over the place. That way at least there will be some evidence of my extreme irritation.

The Scale of the Universe Makes Me Feel Small

February 28, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

My post on the Higgs boson or God particle discussed things that are really small, so here’s some thoughts that take you to somewhere really big. These big thoughts made me feel really small and certainly gave me a totally new perspective.

A couple of years ago, I was in NYC for a writing conference. My husband came with me and we went down a day early to check out the city. We decided to visit the American Museum of Natural History. Neither of us had been there since we were kids. Actually, it was a lot more fun to go as adults. We could look at whatever we wanted (and skip anything we didn’t feel like looking at), we didn’t have to fill out any kind of worksheets or anything, and no chaperones.

There was one particular exhibit that really blew my mind, one I still think about today. The Scales of the Universe looks pretty flashy with the giant model planets that hang from the ceiling and the enormous Hayden Sphere, but the meat-and-bones of the exhibit is based on a simple power of ten scale.

The exhibits walkway starts by showing you the very small (yup, I’m talking about those good old microparticles), and each step takes you to something a little larger, and in comparison you get a little smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller…And as you meander around the walkway, you learn how insignificant your life really is.

The coolest things is how the exhibit uses reference points that are easy to understand. That’s where the models and the Hayden Sphere (which in relative size to the model planets represents the sun) come into play. One step might show you a tiny speck and explain that if the Hayden Sphere were (I’m totally making up this comparison; the museum website shows you real ones) say your head, this speck might be how big a single skin cell is.

That’s how the exhibit does just what it says: it uses the large spheres and smaller models to scale the universe and its parts into a size that is comprehendible. Well, sort of. By the end of the walkway our own universe is so small in comparison to the object to which it’s being compared that you’re not even a speck within a speck within a speck…Whoa! Totally mind (well you know!).

I try to remember this scale when nine months after sending out my baby, my heart and soul on paper (a.k.a. my manuscript), I receive a brief note from an editor saying that she like my manuscript but it wasn’t right for her list. It’s all about keeping things in perspective…at least that’s what I keep telling myself!

The Latest Magnetic Poetry: Sour Pickle Edition

February 22, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

My friends like to share their own unique brand of problems by writing them on my refrigerator. You may remember the last time I shared their magnetic poetry. I have to say, I found their thoughts a bit disturbing.

I’m glad my friends consider my home (or at least my fridge) as safe place for expressing themselves. Here’s the latest entries:

This old dog said you like vacuum prostitutes. (Do I want to know what else you like? Probably not!)
Suck my obedient bosom fire. (That’s what she said!)
Sour pickle mouth takes head. (Ummm…no comment)
Always imagine pleasure and beauty fighting devil spurts. (My personal favorite because it really makes you think.)

Last post I discussed some very small (in the literal sense) things that might actually turn out to be very big (metaphorically). Next post I’ll take a look at something very big indeed!

Discovering (the) God (Particle) Could Open Up a Black Hole

February 11, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

I love when I come across a little bit of information that totally blows my mind. My brother recently made my privy to the God particle (also known as the Higgs boson). This is a tough concept to wrap your head around, but here’s my not-so-scientific explanation of what the God particle is—or rather what it’s hypothesized to be.

First there was the atom, which was thought to be indivisible. Then it was discovered that the atom was actually made of subatomic particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons. So much for that whole indivisible theory! So these subatomic particles must be indivisible. Wrong! While scientists think the electron cannot be divided (and therefore classify it as an elementary particle), protons and neutrons are actually made of other elementary particles.

Okay, so the God particle is supposedly the most fundamental of the all the elementary particles. Scientists think that finding this God particle will help to unravel all the mysteries of the universe. They hope to discover the source of matter, i.e. how things were created.

Scientists have built the Large Hadron Collider in order to try to observe the God particle. The only problem with this device is that there is a very minute chance that it could open up a black hole or cause the Earth to implode. I guess that’s the risk you take when you start smashing very volatile particles together.

The operations of this project actually started last year (and, no, the Earth wasn’t sucked into a black hole!), but a malfunction has since shut down further experiments. It’s scheduled to begin again in the fall of 2009.

In the meantime, I’ll try to get as much blogging in as I can because it would be a real bummer to be sucked into a black hole before I got all my super-important observations out to the public.