Yearly Archives: 2009

So I’m NaNo’ing…

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2009_poster_smaller_0This’ll be quick and dirty, because I want to get to it, but I’ve been thinking for a few days, now, that I should probably ya know…. BLOG. So here I am, BLOGGING.

I am doing NaNoWriMo. First time, and I’m excited. Maybe it’s all the fanfiction I pump out, but I’m not afraid, at least not of the Word Count. Will definitely finish… but I want it to be good. You know? Read like an actual novel, and therein lies the challenge for myself.

It’s coming along nicely, really still working on the first chapter and almost at 5K words in. If you have more than 5K words, don’t talk to me. I want to stay proud of myself! I’m kidding. Sort of.

I hope everyone who is participating is having a good time, and haven’t started freaking out yet. The time for that will come!

Right?? It’s not time for that, yet… right?

Ooooh, and good luck to bloggers doing NaBloMoPo, too! If I had to blog everyday for a month….. : | I don’t even think I have a blog for every month of the year here yet! I just am so bad at keeping up with this thing. SIGH.

At least I am here. And I fall in when I can. Alright. On with it.

NanoNano,

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Yeah, Hi.

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What’s up blog people! Just saying hi and things, doing my monthly “I’m alive!” wave. Things are good, for me. Living and such, so that’s good. I have been trying to get out of the house more, so I haven’t been around much. I’d apologize but…. I don’t think that’s a bad thing!

So, I’ve been telling myself that I’m going to to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) … and I started a project earlier this year not knowing you couldn’t pick up something you’d already started for NaNo. Booo. Because. I kind of want to dedicate November to that project and try to get it off the ground. I’ve had my head in so much… other stuff… sometimes I just need a break from it. So I may not do the official NaNo thing this year. I don’t have any other ideas, really. I guess if I come up with one, I’m on board!

I blogged last month that I wasn’t doing much reading, and vowed to fix that. So, I bought some books! Let me just say that I bought one that I really regret buying. UGH. I just do not like it. I’m not going to finish it. And I want to banish it from my bookcase. Ech. I DID buy two books I’m kind of into:

Push, by Sapphire– reading this for a book club I joined (yay, me). It’s a really compelling story… because of my own personal history, stories of abuse really intrigue me. Kind of helps me feel less alone. Anyway, Push has been developed into a movie that I kind of can’t wait to see and am kind of dreading seeing. You know that feeling? I just think it’s going to be a very well done, thought provoking film.

The Associate, by John Grisham- anyone who knows me knows I’m a big fan of legal thrillers, specifically Grisham and Lescroart. I’ve pretty much read everything they’ve put out in this genre. I feel like Grisham is, lately in his career, one step up and two steps back. He started off firehot from The Firm, but some of his more recent releases were a little ‘meh’. I mean, I still read them. The Appeal was really hard to get through, for some reason. The Associate seems to be traveling along, fine though. Really suspenseful story line, a bit nail bitingly awesome, really draws you in. It’s a little ‘The Firm’ ish, so I hope the level of suspense stays the same throughout. And then it gets made into a movie, because YES. :-)

*Note to self, you have read ‘An Innocent Man!’ GET ON THAT!*

Okay, since I am blogging at work, I’d better do some! Just saw the site in my bookmarks and thought I should post up a time or two!

I hope everyone is doing a-ok!

Check in

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I’ve got a couple of tweets from people asking if I’m alive, so I thought I’d drop a quick line to say YES. :-D

Things have been pretty okay since coming home, just have been busy. I still haven’t set up my writing space, mostly due to not a lot of money to do that. May be my fall project. In the meantime the couch or the bed, or next to a caramel macchiato will have to do.

And has been doing just fine. I sort of got to a place where I could write about writing, or I could write. I got very deeply into a particular piece and took it to a place where I needed a break from it. Pulled out something previously unfinished and actually finished it. It was nice to switch gears and change pace.

The one thing I haven’t taken time to do a lot of is READ. Which is a bad, bad writer thing I know. Writers read, so I must get back on that train. I downloaded a few new titles to the Kindle app for iPod, so uhmmmmmmmm as soon as I FIND my iPod, I will get to reading! The boss is out from Tuesday on, so hopefully I will have a lot of downtime to get some reading in.

So that’s it, in a nutshell! I haven’t been abducted by aliens and I’m not living a double life and I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth. Just living and breathing and things like that. ;)

Peace, and I’ll try to update again, soon.

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On a horse with no name…

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I had about 5 options for naming this post… a few witty, some blatantly honest. I didn’t know which one to go with so I chose none of them. That’s kind of how things go in my life. If I can’t decide, I choose NONE of the options.  Don’t know what I want for lunch? I just don’t eat. Don’t know what color pens I want to buy? I buy none of them. I don’t think the word moderation or compromise have entries in my dictionary.

So, I’m having a problem. My problem is two fold– too much and not enough. How is that possible, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

As I was explaining to a friend earlier, I keep pretty busy. I may not seem busy and I may even tell you that I am boring and I do nothing but in reality I run two moderately trafficked message boards. I read and I write and and I try to keep up with twitter and blogs and facebook. I try to stay abreast important events, just in case I am asked to be on Jeopardy. I try to get out of the house every now and again, leave the county, see friends, go to brunch. I travel when I can, and recently I’ve been decorating my apartment.  That’s a lot of stuff, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Staying on top of everything and keeping a finger in each pot seems to keep me going.

But then I have so much going on that I’m overwhelmed and I feel like dropping everything and going back to being a bump on a log, picking lint out of my belly button and wishing for something to do. I get tired of staying on top of everything and being the focal point of everything. I have this blog I’d like to stay current with, and I am not. I have reading that I am SO BEHIND on, haven’t made time to dig into any books. I have two WIP’s that are, literally, going nowhere.

Every weekend I intend to recharge and get caught up on these mini tasks that grow into lots of mini tasks and become a mega task. And every weekend I end up doing…….something…..and the weekend is over and it’s Sunday night and I look at my task list and *shrug* .

Tired. I’m too tired to even dictate to myself what I am going to do and by when I am going to do it. At this point I am just hoping that when the mood strikes I will be awake enough to romance either one of myWIP’s and make me fall in love with it again because uh…………baby, the thrill is gone.

(Temporarily) Lost that lovin’ feelin’,

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Lessons people should learn from me:

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Well, actually just one lesson.

Do not open a document in Outlook email, work on it, add 2000 words to it and then save it and go to bed.


It will not be there when you wake up in the morning and want to look at it, with fresh eyes. No, no it won’t. You will be devastated and stare at the computer, mouth agape, for the better part of an hour while desperately typing phrases like ‘recover documents vista’ into google, hoping for  a miracle. You won’t find one. And so you’ll have to spend your Wednesday night sulking while you muster up some energy to RETYPE whatever you typed the night before.

But you won’t feel like it, because what you typed last night was brilliant and inspired. What you’re retyping is so much cud, just regurgitated from memory. Your mojo will be gone and you’ll have to do something to bring it back.

But somewhere around 11:30, your mojo, your writing fu will laze it’s way in and leisurely hang up the keys and slip off it’s jacket and untie it’s shoes and at some point get around to giving you some motivation and inspiration.

And at 1:07 am, you’ll find yourself back in the spot you were in the night before. And you will feel awesome about it- but you’ll also learn your lesson and choose to SAVE AS and save it in two different places and email it to yourself. You know, just to be sure.

Just so you know, that’s what’s going to happen. So do not follow my lead or my example. Do it the right way, download it and save it and then edit it.

Cause if you don’t…….well WHO KNOWS what will happen?

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Does this Stylebook make me look fat?

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Fuel Your Writing (which, by the way, is a fantastic new site published by the Fuel Brand of sites.  Writing tips and guidelines and commiserations galore. Follow them at @fuelyourwriting or follow them on Facebook) published a new post today, which I think was written just for me, for two reasons:

a) I have a mild problem with buying writing books but not reading them. But really, I have an excuse and that is that they are packed up, and I can’t unpack them because I don’t have a place to unpack them TO. And SO. I haven’t cracked open a writing book in… it’s been a while, alright? Today I am going desk hunting or at the very least bookcase hunting and I hope I find something I want to bring home and set up and call my very own, so that I can have a writing spot and SPACE for books.

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b) I need a style guide. I mean, there is really only so much that the internet can do for you, until you find 12 different sites with just as many differing viewpoints and you don’t know which to choose, and so you close your eyes and pick one and hope no one reads it and goes “…..is that right? Is that how… hmm. I would have thought… did you look that up???” Continue reading →

So I’m back.

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Vacation was fantastic. Subperbly fantastic. It was great to see my family and all my friends on both sides of the state of Washington. Yay. It was a much needed, well deserved, and thoroughly enjoyed break. I have some photos if anyone cares– snaps 1 and snaps 2!

Unfortunately I didn’t have much time for reading OR writing on vacation. I suppose that’s what a real vacation is though. Time away from everything you spend all your time doing. Nonetheless, I am back in action and ready to get back in the writing saddle. I’m looking for a desk and a chair to put in my study so I can start furnishing that room and have a place to write that isn’t a couch or a bed.

Vacation gave me some good time and space and I feel like I might be able to get my arms around my latest project. I’ve had some feeedback on the first chapter and the accolades range from ‘what?’ to ‘really good’. *shrug*. Dunno what to do with that, so… onward ho!

I have a chapter to consider and edit and a chapter to plan, outline andwrite. Weeeeeee!

It’s good to be home,

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So now what?

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imagesUhm.

So, when I said I was going to attempt a new project, a lot of people said ‘oh, the first chapter is the hardest! Get that out of the way and you’ll be good to go!’

To those people I’d like to say— No.

Because for me, the start is always the easiest and most exciting. It’s where I feel like I am finally accomplishing things and getting these ideas swirling around in my head out and on “paper”. I’m excited and I’m purposeful and I’m typing and fingers are flying and I’m DOING IIIIITTTTTTT!

But then I get to the end of Chapter 1 and think… well. Now what? Because this is where I am. And here is where a little bit of fear creeps in because I realize that I know what I want this story to be about but I don’t have a freaking clue what happens in it. Odd, huh? And then I think ‘what kind of a writer has no clue what happens in their story?’

And there’s where I have to stop myself and focus on something else.

So I figured out that I need to find out what actually happens in this story– what are the little valleys between the peaks of major action? I consulted my favorite reference– Al Gore’s internet– and came upon some tips on creating the story arc, which I hope will help me plot out the pieces. The following is from. Writing a Novel by Nigel Watts (by way of dailywritingtips.com):

Continue reading →

In with the new

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So, anyone who is paying attention to this blog (which I think is just me) might have noticed that I added something new to my Writers Write page, which is the list of projects that I’m working on. YAY.

This has been a long time coming– really long, almost a year. For about a year I have been writing drabbles and exercises and snips and shorts and fanfiction, in preparation for writing something completely original, out of my brain. On the one hand, I’m excited, really excited because this is a new step for me. On the other hand, I’m scared out of my mind.

For really no reason.  It’s just scary to me for some reason.

I’ve had this idea rolling around in my head for months, now. I started doing some research on it a few months ago and I have a long way to go but I’ve at least started the project (I feel better calling it a project than a book because if I call it a book then I hyperventilate and then tell myself I’m ridiculous for thinking I could write a book that anyone wants to read) and I’m just going to keep pushing forward. No matter how stupid or kind of YA or juvenile I think my storyline might be (because it’s kind of leaning toward YA, which wasn’t really my goal, but… it will grow up pretty quickly, in the coming chapters, which I hope will rescue it from the YA genre. But I guess, if it ends there, it ends there. At least I wrote it), I’m going to keep on trucking.

I think I have a very rough chapter 1. Could add more but I’m going to leave it, for now but I’m happy with the foundation I’ve begun to set.

I’m also using yWriter for the first time and I have to say that for a new project, the setup takes a LOT of time and a lot of thinking, but it’s been really good for me, for this project. It helps me think in terms of scene and sequence, action and reaction and not entire chapters or entire storylines or entire themes. It’s like that adage that you can’t eat an entire apple in one bite. You eat it one bite at a time or one slice at a time.  yWriter helps me slice the apple up into manageable pieces. And alleviates stress.  A little.

So, hopefully this blog will be a living testament to what it’s like to write a long form piece.  Have you written a novel? Did you write about writing it? I’d love to be a voyeur and read all about it. You know, just to make sure I’m not crazy. Ha. Not really. Yes, really.

Well, world building is hard work and this writer is tired so, off to bed I go!

Cheerio!

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Simplify, simplify

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I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m a very simple person.

I don’t drive an extravagant model of car. I mean, I drive a KIA. It’s worth $6.99.

I don’t have a lot of clothes. The clothes I do have aren’t anywhere near designer or anything.

I don’t particularly like really fancy food. In fact, the fancier the food, the less I probably like it.

A great night out, for me, is hanging with some friends, having a slice or two from Fellini’s Pizza, and then watching a bad movie on cable.

So why, when it comes to writing, I try to get all fancified, I don’t know. But it isn’t working. So I need to get back to what worked. and what worked was being simple.

Simple meant one, singular goal: To improve my craft and skill at the art of telling a story. I have done that, by mere consequence of writing more and reading more, but it used to be that I would pick out a trait that I didn’t like about my writing, or read an instructional book on writing and put those skills to work. That was why I was writing such things as fanfiction and drabbles and snippets and such and such. It wasn’t so much the story– though it was, some, the story– it was the skill.  I was inspired to improve on certain things, one skill at a time.

Was I writing effective dialogue? Showing, not telling? Eliminating adverbs? Using descriptive imagery? Creating more effective transitions between people, or events, or gaps of time?

Simple meant enjoyment:  writing to enjoy the process, to enjoy reading it back, to enjoy hearing how others liked reading it or how it impacted them and in what ways they could relate. Lately, it’s like dragging myself to the computer, and I avoid writing because  I just no longer enjoy doing it. It’s now more pressure on myself to ‘finish the project’ and not enjoy writing and learning and changing and growing. Continue reading →

I “R” A Graduite.

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It’s official!

6 weeks, 12 lessons, 8 assignments,  12 quizzes, one final exam and I am a graduate of Advanced Fiction Writing! \o/

This was my first class and I really enjoyed it. Started off kind of easy but then it got a little more difficult, which I didn’t mind at all. I picked up some great tips, and techniques, dos & don’ts and now I have all of the lesson plans saved for future reference– a really good starting point along with all of the writing books I have bought (and haven’t finished– I have an excuse, they’re all packed up!)

So now I am thinking I will take another, but not sure. Write Like a Pro starts July 15th, I may take that one, or some other selection. I’ll be traveling through some of that, so not sure but I’m tempted!

Anyway, YAY!

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