Thanks so much, everyone, for all your kind words about Buttonsworth. I'm still in a period of mourning and distracting myself with work, so today I'm going to put up a how-to post on surviving road trips. Not that I have any experience or anything. 

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My husband, daughter and I live in Kansas City. Both sets of our parents live in Iowa. Which means: road trips. Lots of them. Like almost every month, and the drive is from three to five hours each way.

You'd think in the era of portable DVD players, iPads, iPhones and NOOKs that entertaining oneself in the car for a few hours would be cheesecake. This, unfortunately, is not the case. My daughter just started liking to play digital games in the last year. I may not win any mother-of-the-year awards for saying this, but there were days when I would beg her to just play a game so I didn't have to play one more round of I Spy while twisting myself around so uncomfortably in the front seat to look at her that I actually pulled a back muscle once. Here are some ways to pass the time we've developed for our now eight-year-old road-tripper.

Credit Image: Damian Gadal on Flickr

Stories

This is a broad category that includes everything from reading a story to writing a story to her writing a bit and then me writing a bit to her creating graphic novels. There are many websites that let you turn a story your child writes into a book. (Speaking of that, I have three sitting here on my desk to be scanned and converted!)

Word Games

Think of the game show that is least annoying to you and try to convert it to a car version. I personally like Wheel of Fortune, so we play Hangman a lot. Although -- hangman? Seriously? Who came up with this draconian way of losing? I'd like to say I've come up with a kinder, gentler version, but I haven't. I just try really hard not to lose.

Conversation

How many times do you actually make conversation -- like cocktail party conversation -- with your kid? I usually don't -- we talk about what happened that day or what we're having for dinner or how she really feels strongly she does not have enough pairs of leggings. On road trips, I've learned how her favorite color has changed from blue to purple, who her friends are, what she wants to be when she grows up and whether or not she thinks she'll have kids. Some of my favorite conversations have happened in the car.

So, there you have it. Trust me, I'm no saint -- these are the things I go to AFTER she has watched as many movies as she will watch and played as many games as she will play and read as many books as she will read. I hate riding in cars for long periods of time and prefer to spend my own time working on a novel or with my nose in a book. But if we must interact while trapped in a small box for hours, these are my favorite ways to do it.

How do you survive roadies?

When we were dealing with Petunia's diabetes diagnosis, my best friend told me about Ira Glass and his dog, Piney. I guess Ira's dog bites people and has crazy allergies -- he has to eat a different protein/starch combo every eight months until he gets allergic to it. Steph said she heard Ira interviewed on NPR, and he was talking about how taking care of Piney had kind of become his life.

Yesterday afternoon, I called the vet to check on Buttonsworth, who had been there all day getting enema after enema. The vet said the first one had worked, but nothing since then, and he was trying and trying but getting nothing, and the next step would be to put him under and, I don't know, dig it out of him, but that had risks, and he'd found some medicine, but it cost $60 a month and needed to be given three times a day, and there was really no guarantee it would work.

I started crying. I called Beloved. We talked about two shots a day and three pills a day that might not work and all the enemas and the fact that Buttonsworth had developed megacolon and it might just never work properly again, and I realized I was becoming like Ira Glass. I've been at the vet's office more times in the last month than the grocery store. I'm was watching Buttonsworth like a hawk. My anxiety is through the roof.

And I can't make him poop. At some point, you can become obsessed, and I was becoming obsessed, perhaps even to the detriment of poor Buttonsworth, who probably did not like all the enemas or the pain of constipation.

We made the decision not to even bring him home, because if we brought him home, I didn't know if I could bear to take him back. I called the vet back, told him to stop with the enemas, we were coming in to say goodbye.

I told the little angel, who had been prepared that this might happen. The child is growing very resilient to pet death, much more so than I have. We got in Vicki and drove to the vet's office. They brought out Buttonsworth, and the three of us covered his face in kisses and told him how much we loved him and how proud of him we were. Then we donated his insulin and syringes. Beloved and the little angel stopped for ice cream on the way home, even though we hadn't had dinner yet. I called my family and sobbed my way home. The little angel and I watched two episodes of Clean House. I had to go downstairs during book time because I couldn't stop crying. I looked at all my photos of Buttonsworth and asked myself how, again, I keep picking these sick cats? But as I looked at the pictures, I couldn't regret adopting him, even though the final total on this month was nearly a thousand dollars and he still died. He kept Beloved company during the months of unemployment. He taught Kizzy to sleep on the little angel's bed. He taught us to not be afraid of cat diabetes like we were before. He wagged his little Manx tail and rumblepurred and gave us so much love and happiness for the short four months that he was here.

So, farewell, Sir Charles Buttonsworth. We will miss you. And we are proud to say the day you died, we had finally stabilized your blood sugar. So in that we did not fail you.

Inches of snow that fell in my yard this weekend: 9

Inches of poop that came out of Buttonsworth after one enema at the emergency vet on Saturday: 6

Inches of poop remaining in Buttonsworth now: 6

Number of enemas the emergency vet wanted to give him: 5

Amount the emergency vet would charge for this service: $918

Amount I paid to get him one enema and subcutaneous fluids: $166

Number of times Buttonsworth would have died this weekend if he hadn't had an enema: 1

Number of enemas Buttonsworth has had in the past three weeks: 7 and counting

Amount of money we have spent on vets and medicine for Buttonsworth this month: $674.41 and counting

Number of months we have owned Buttonsworth: 4

Number of weeks we are giving him on a new medicine to see if we can get his colon to work: 2

Number of weeks he has been on insulin: 4

Number of hearts in this house that will be broken if the new medicine doesn't work: 3

Number of cats that will be left: 1

Number of cats my daughter desperately wants: 2

Chances of getting a second cat if Buttonsworth dies based on my husband's feelings: 0%

Number of vet trips in the past seven days: 3

Number of posts on Surrender, Dorothy in the past seven days: 2

Number of days I've wanted to crawl back in bed within twenty minutes of getting out of it: 7

While I was looking for a publisher for THE OBVIOUS GAME, I started my next novel. It's tentatively called THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. I had to start something, because the waiting was killing me. In the past few weeks, I've returned to it with a vengeance to keep myself from becoming obsessed with how THE OBVIOUS GAME is selling, because at this point I've done pretty much everything in my power to sell it with pretty much zero marketing budget and a very indie distribution model. The reviews are good, and I can only hope word of mouth will take it from here. ONWARD!

THE OBVIOUS GAME took three years to write, but I thought I was done with it after one year. ROOKIE MISTAKE! I made the second rookie mistake of sending it out in that condition before it was ready. I'm determined not to do that with PARKER CLEAVES. I also had a lot of structural difficulties with TOG. I had scenes that didn't make any sense in the larger context of the story, characters that appeared out of nowhere with a huge role to play (Lin) but no backstory and pacing problems (too slow). (Which is interesting, because one reviewer said it now moves too fast. I think that's a YA genre thing -- moving the plot along quickly was something I heard over and over again from agents.)

I had about half of TOG written before I really started outlining the second half. Originally, the story ended right after Diana's big scene with Lin outside the school (no spoilers). Then a literary agent told me the story needed another half. Of course, that was hard to hear (I thought I was done!), but it was awesome advice. It absolutely needed another half, because all the best parts of the story (in my opinion) are in the last third of the book. Let's all thank God for unanswered prayers.

This time, I'm all about the outline. Some writers can't funtion that way, but we are all special snowflakes, and I've always worked best from an outline. I was one of the only people I know who actually used them for papers in high school. I decided it would be easier if I had a software program to help me. Most writers I know use Srivener, but I got an email deal for StoryMill and from what I can tell, they are pretty similar. The only issue I have with StoryMill is that it's on my desktop Mac, so if I want to work on TBoPC when I'm not at home, I have to export the outline to Word and print it or work on it from a different PC. Lately I've been completely overwhelmed looking at StoryMill, so I've been picking a scene to work on and writing it out longhand. I know! I haven't written longhand in years, but this is what is keeping me from freaking out right now. I'm going with it.

The other cool thing about software is that you can keep a running list of characters and tag your scenes with characters so you don't make that mistake I originally made with Lin -- a secondary character who becomes important but has no backstory. It's not easy to go back and sprinkle backstory like the Novel Fairy. By tagging characters to scenes, I can easily tell if there's a character who appears too much for his/her role in the story or not enough. I can also grab entire scenes and move them pretty painlessly. I wish I'd had that with TOG, because I ended up starting in five different places before I got it right. That was some white-knuckled cut-and-paste, I tell you.

Here's a list of my characters so far for TBoPC. I'm not sure about all of them. I haven't written Uncle Mike into the story yet at all. He may get replaced with a closer peer to Parker. There's a role that character needs to play, but I haven't decided who he is yet, only that he is a he. Also, who the fuck is Angela? I've already forgotten. Oops. Christopher was originally Clyde, but my husband told me he just couldn't relate to a Clyde in that role. I actually loved the name Clyde for spoiler-y reasons, but Beloved is usually right about knee-jerk reader reactions, so I've learned to trust him even though I think he's totally wrong. Time will tell.

If you click on each of those, you could see a character sketch if I had actually done one, which I haven't. I usually only need those before I start writing, because once I get going, the character evolves so quickly in my head the descriptions just end up getting outdated too fast and are confusing. And embarrassing -- as IF I thought Helen would have brown hair, OMG! Yes, writers can even get embarrassed by themselves to themselves even if no one else is watching. Occupational hazard.

I recently read in one of my writing magazines that you should think of your shitty first draft as the clay, not the sculpture. When I was writing TOG, I thought I was working on the sculpture and tried to make the first draft all perfect. This time, I'm fully aware I'm puking out clay and that this draft sucks as a piece of writing and exists mostly to figure out the plot. Much less stressful. I'm about 16k words in, and I expect I'll top out at about 75k before I start revising. TOG is just under 69k, for reference, and I've been given the guideline of 50k-90k for young adult. The scenes I'm writing are all half-finished. I just try to get the mood for the scene right and if any dialogue comes to me out of the clear blue or because I'm eavesdropping in a food court, I get it down right away before I forget it. That's why those scenes in StoryMill are so nice. That method totally does not work in Word.

TOG focused on what it feels like to have an eating disorder and how to come back from one. TBoPC isn't an issues novel -- it will be a story about power, who has it and why.

I'm on deadline today, so all I have to share is a giveaway for free tickets to the 2013 Kansas City Home Show and Flower, Lawn & Garden Show on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.

Took Buttonsworth to the vet today and we upped his insulin again. More later.

The little angel ate too fast last night at dinner, and something went down the wrong tube. She kept hacking long after she should've been able to stop, to the point where it got humorous.

Me: "Well, it's stupid that humans eat and breath out of the same orifice, really. So much margin for error."

Her: "YACKACCCOUUUUGHG"

Me: "I mean, I think dolphins have two holes."

Her: "CGOAOGFAHSEASEAAASHLRG"

Him: "It could be worse. You could eat and poop out the same hole."

Her: (recovering) "Squids only have one hole."*

*I looked this up. It's actually sea anemone, but hey? SCIENCE!

Hey, y'all. Here's my latest Goodreads giveaway. This is for a paperback copy. Scroll down for the latest Surrender, Dorothy post!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Obvious Game

by Rita Arens

Giveaway ends April 30, 2013.

See the giveaway detailsat Goodreads.

Enter to win

Yesterday I documented our decision to treat Sir Charles Buttonsworth's diabetes on BlogHer.

There were requests for video of Kizzy's insanity. Happy Friday!

Last night I was having dinner with a writer friend of mine. I'd brought her my extra copy of THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO GETTING YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED by The Book Doctors (Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, who let me introduce them and their darling child to Jalepeno's and Reading Reptile on their last swing through Kansas City). My friend left the table toward the end of the meal, and a man about my dad's age leaned over from the next table (which was very nearby), gestured to the book and asked if I was trying to publish a book.

I got to tell him my novel came out last month. That was super fun.

We got into a conversation in which he told us he is voracious reader on his Kindle, that his eyesight isn't so good for print anymore, and that he'd like to publish a book. His wife leaned in at one point to say he was a fine writer, a gesture so sweet and loving I almost fell out of my chair. He asked if I'd majored in English, and I said not the first time. He told me he'd been a lawyer for years because his father wanted him to, and he really hated being a lawyer but he liked to write. I ended up giving him my author card and telling him it's never too late to write.

Because it's never too late to write.*

*Sometimes it's too late to write well. This post could've been a lot better if I had more time. But it's a cool story, and I'll totally forget it if I don't put it down. So, sorry! But still cool, eh?