Mother's Cookies

I was confronted this morning with devastating news. Mother's Cookies has closed it's doors. While this isn't as apocalyptic news as say, Nabisco discontinuing the Oreo, it still punches me in the gut.

As a child Circus Animal cookies were a rare treat. Those blah shortbread cookie deluged with greasy pink and white frosting and sprinkles really appealed to me. And every holiday they came out with special colors: red, white and blue for 4th of July, black and orange for Halloween and green and red for Christmas.

My favorite was Cookie Parade. It was my own special post-pregnancy food. I was sneak up to the drugstore as soon as I got home from the hospital, gray-faced with pain, just to get my fix. And I hid them. No one touched my cookies. I'd grab them my the handfuls and eat them in one huge cookie mess. Probably pretty disgusting to watch but for some reason it was the only way I could eat them.

I'm going to miss Mother's Cookies. They weren't the best tasting cookies although the soft pumpkin cookies I bought the other day are pretty good. But they were cheap and colorful. The packaging was familiar. While so many other cookie companies changed their products (how many different variety of Oreos are there?), Mother's pretty much stuck to its usual.

Good bye, Mother's Cookies, you will be missed.

Would You Like to Buy Some Cookies?

It is that time again. Girl Scouts are out to ruin our diets with their innocously named cookis. A "Thin Mint" doesn't sound dangerous right? How can an "All About" be harmful? Every cookie has a Girl Scout virtue baked right in.

Last year I was the cookie manager for my daughter's troop. I've retired. Once was enough, I was far too stressed. The leader is taking it over and I told her I would help. I much better in a supporting role. Each girl has a goal to sell 200 boxes of cookies. My daugter wants to go out door to door and sell cookies. Ughhhh....Which means I get to go door to door selling cookies. I'd rather get a root canal.

Oddly enough I still have cookies from last year. I got real tired of cookies. But I don't think it would take much to get me hooked into the cycle again. And they've introduced the "Lemon Chalet" cookie, a sandwich cookie with lemon cream. Yum. Course this little thing has 80 calories per cookie. Yikes.

Do you like Girl Scout cookies? Do you have a favorite? Were you in Girl Scouts?

Goal, Motivation & Logic...and Cookies

So I have considerably less cookies in my house now, thank goodness. Boy, was that a load of work. After this weekend I should be about nil. The remodel on my house is supposed to start a week from Monday, so I've said no more cookies after that, I have no place to put them. I'll do the leg work, but no storage. I'd never tasted a tagalong. Wow, wish I hadn't. Those are tasty, but my loyalty will always be with the thin mint. I like trefoils too. They are really good dipped in hot chocolate, coffee, red wine, a shot of Jack Daniels....

I haven't been writing. I'm struggling finding a story that will hold my interest through the end. I had one idea and started writing, but I couldn't answer the questions. Writers talk about GMC (goals, motivation, conflict) but I struggle with GML (goals, motivation, logic). How many times have you read a book and thought "wow, that heroine/hero was absolute moron?" There is the TSTL characters (too stupid to live) which drag a book down. It isn't that the author is purposely being dense, its that they are thinking strictly in GMC. I saw this a lot in the Golden Heart entries I judged. The writer answered the goal, motivation and conflict just fine, but in the end, it wasn't logical and made the character look like an idiot. It also turned the story into a muddled, confusing mess.

My story I was working on was another urban fantasy (in first person POV, I'm leaving the 3rd person alone for awhile). But I had a core question whose answer would negate the entire book. Sure, I could write around it, pretend the answer didn't exist, but in my head I couldn't do it. I think when plotting out a conflict, a writer needs to look at the question and try to answer it as many ways as possible. How many times have you read a book where a conflict would get resolved with one conversation? I think that's why the Big Mis has really annoyed readers.

Anyway, I've moved onto a story which is a world I've got more control over. I havent' started the writing yet since I need to make sure I can answer the questions with logic.

Do you think through all the questions before you write?