Author Archives: MJones

About MJones

Miss M is a reader, writer, lover of coffee, devourer of words, catcher of spirits, liver of dreams. This blog is my place to spill my writerly musings and observations. I'm trying not to focus on being published or world famous, but to be content to allow the words, ideas, meaning, hopes and dreams to flow from my fingertips and leave the world forever changed for having done so.

2011- What I Did With My Year

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Year end is fast approaching and I’m sure all of my blog friends are busily preparing their final posts and goals for 2012, gearing up to pounce on the New Year. I’m still figuring out what I want to do with my year, next year. I don’t know that I want to “set goals” per se… because having a list of things to do isn’t very motivating to me. Rather, I do things that inspire and energize and propel me towards better writing and better writing habits. When I look back on what I’ve accomplished this year, I certainly wouldn’t have written myself a list of to-do’s this long:

- Finished up a long serial fiction story that I started in January 2009 as a hundred word prompt from Writer’s Digest. It continues to be my “baby”.
- Read 50+ books. I mentioned this before but I’m very proud of achieving that goal! Next year I’m increasing my goal to 60- join me!
- Wrote 120K + words. Yep. That’s a lotta typing.
- Wrote 8 short stories.
-  Four of those 8 were original fiction!
- Started two books- one creative non fiction, one fiction novel. Both are stalled at the moment.
- Joined Atlanta Writer’s Club and Georgia Writer’s Association
- Got knocked down. Got back up again.
- Joined/participated in DIYMFA
- Met four authors: Susan Rebecca White, Kathryn Stockett, Tayari Jones, and Bernice McFadden
- Put my writing on display by joining Six Sentence Sunday
- Featured at Wellness & Writing Connections Newsletter, Storyfix.com and Indie Ink.org
- Led three fiction writing challenges at the Fiction Archive

While I’m in the middle of something, I’m slowly simmering and worrying that I’m not doing enough or writing enough or reading enough or learning enough. I’m not available enough for beginning writers and I’m not paying enough attention to those I can learn from…. but when I step back and take a look at the big picture… it’s a very pretty painting of something I’m very proud of.
Here’s to a busier and better 2012, in which I will PERSIST.

 

123,474.

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123,474. That’s my total word count for 2011. Quite a bit shy of my goal of 350K, so it’s a good thing I dropped that challenge, eh?

I’ve finished my Secret Santa story for the fiction archive and I don’t plan to do anymore writing this year, so I’m publishing this number as my 2011 count. Still not too shabby for a year when I had unplanned, haphazard writing and didn’t have a serial story to update for most of the year.

I’m planning to take January off from writing. My creative muscle is so tired. I have no ideas, really and I feel like I need to feed my imagination. I’ll be spending January reading as much as possible and trying to prime the pump for ideas and goals for the new year.

Bling Blang Blung… DONE! The 2011 GoodReads challenge is in the bag!

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I set a goal this year to read 50 books and since I JUST finished book #50, it’s time to celebrate!

I’ve always called myself a voracious reader but in reality I probably read about ten books a year. Then I started writing in earnest and reading a lot helped my writing. So in an effort to feed this symbiotic relationship, I joined the challenge this year.

Looking over the list of the books I’ve read this year, I’m filled with pride and memories. Some were quick reads, some I had to push through. All of them gave me a sense of accomplishment that I’ve been sorely lacking lately.

Next year, I think I’ll add a few more and go for it again! Join me!

30 Days of Books- Willful Disobedience

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I’m skipping today’s question– favorite book you own because seriously? I own a lot of books and I love them ALLLLLL. Picking a favorite isn’t happening.

Instead I will yammer about writing and reading. How’s that?

Last week during my luxurious Thanksgiving break, I read three books, which put me a couple of books ahead in the Goodreads Challenge I set for myself. I’m hoping I’ll finish the year over goal, which would be great. I read two books by Hillary Jordan- When She Woke and Mudbound. Both were excellent. I don’t remember the third book… must not have been remarkable. ;)

I am still plugging away on my gift for the Story Exchange. I am on idea #4 now. I mean, at least the ideas keep coming? I’m hoping I have something I can write to the end. Or if it does, that another idea comes to me because… errr. Yeah. It’s due soon!

I think that’s about it from this front. The year is winding down and I’m already thinking about what goals I want to achieve next year.

How about you? Is 2012 knocking on your door already?

30 Days of Books – Day 21: Favorite book from your childhood

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Day 21 – Favorite book from your childhood

On the Banks of Plum Creek- A Laura Ingalls Wilder Book

I probably read this book four or five times one summer, then went to the library and borrowed them all until I made my way through every Little House book.

30 Days of Books – Day 20 – Favorite romance book

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Day 20 – Favorite romance book

I am not really huge on romances. I find them pretty unrealistic and they make me roll my eyes more than anything– and I’m not just talking Harlequin. A romance has to be really good to hold my attention, i.e it has to be more than Bucky and Lucille rolling around in the hay in secret. Probably the only romance author I’ve read is LaVyrle Spencer,author of contemporary and historical romance. She retired from writing in 1997, but before then she published 25 romance novels about much more than romance. Her heroines are not shrinking violets, nor are they shrews. Her male main characters aren’t larger than life or unrealistic.

I really love all of her work, but the one book that stands out to me is Forgiving. THIS is the book that made me love historical romance.

From Goodreads:

Sarah Merritt arrives in Deadwood, Dakota territory, in 1876 with her father’s printing press and two ambitions–to find her sister Addie and to establish a local newspaper. In a town of mining bachelors, Sarah quickly becomes the center of attention in more ways than one, particularly when she knocks heads with marshal Noah Campbell, her soon-to-be romantic interest. Sarah finds Addie working in a local brothel and commences a long struggle to win back her affection and her soul. She writes to Addie’s former fiance, who comes to Deadwood and joins her in pursuing Addie’s salvation, an endeavor which will force them all to confront an ugly secret from the past.

This book, from the amazon reviews, seems to have been panned as a B Grade Western drama. I just didn’t see it that way. I loved Sarah and my heart ached for Addie and I rooted for Noah. *shrug* I liked it.

30 Days of Books- Day 19: Fave book turned into a movie

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Day 19 – Favorite book turned into a movie

Oddly, I am watching it right now. This movie introduced me to John Grisham. It is his debut novel, The Firm, turned into a major motion picture starring Tom Cruise. Of course, the book is better than the film.

From Goodreads:

Mitchell McDeere, raised in the coal-mining region of rural Kentucky, has worked hard to get where he is: third in his class at Harvard Law. He’s young. He’s bright. He’s ambitious. Mitch could have the pick of the big firms in New York and Chicago, but he’s chosen the Memphis tax firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke. They’re selective. They pay outrageous salaries. They have a turnover rate of zero. And Mitch is about to find out why.Several events fuel Mitch’s growing suspicions: two of the partners die in a suspicious diving accident off Grand Cayman; the senior partners seem unduly proud of the fact that no one has ever resigned; and security measures at the office are, even for a company with billionaire clients, more than a little extreme. Then Mitch makes an explosive discovery: The firm is owned and operated by the most powerful organized crime family in Chicago. Even as Mitch discovers the truth, he finds himself caught between the FBI, who wants an informant inside the firm, and the firm itself, which will make him a very rich man—or a very dead one.

30 Days of Books, Day 18- A book that disappointed you

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I skipped yesterday. The ‘favorites’ thing was getting to me. I didn’t have a favorite quote… at least not one that I could wake up from my nap to remember… So we’re on to day 18!

Day 18 – A book that disappointed you

I am a huge Grisham fan, have read everything he’s written in the legal thriller genre, but I did not like this book. There were several that grew on me about halfway through. This one just never got me. The moment I read about  ’the drug’ and ‘the big case that could win us millions’, it immediately reminded me of King of Torts, which I enjoyed, but I definitely wasn’t going to read it again with different characters. Incredibly disappointed in this book.

Still love Grisham though.

30 Days of Books – Day 16- Fave Female Character

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Day 16 – Favorite female character

Look at me, posting in my blog every day this week!

Anyway, ya’ll knew this was coming, right?

“I must confess that I think her as delightful a character as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know”. 

- Jane Austen

Even if Darcy wasn’t my favorite male character, Elizabeth Bennet has been my favorite female character forever. I love her biting wit, high intelligence, and unmatched strength. I love her sharp tongue (I’ve always admired a woman who can cut a person down without being vulgar. I call it the Julia Sugarbaker), her sense of good will, her love for her sisters and family. I love that she wants to marry for love and will settle for nothing less.  Most of all, I love that she knows when she is wrong and is about to miss a good thing in Darcy.  In this couple, I don’t see  butting heads, rather iron sharpening iron.

A great match, indeed. They’re my favorite fictional couple.

All this talk of Pride and Prejudice makes me want to watch the movie this weekend! I have the 2 DVD set and FOUR DAYS OFF!

 

30 Days of Books – Day 15: Fave Male Character

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Day 15 – Favorite male character

I think this one will be kind of obvious… and tomorrow, too. He’s the first character that comes to mind when I think of one I love dearly.

Fitzwilliam Darcy is the male protagonist in Jane Austen’s classic “Pride and Prejudice”.  I saw the BBC Mini Series before I ever read the novel, so Darcy will forever and always be Colin Firth. Speak nothing of that horrific remake with the most uncharismatic Darcy ever. It’s BBC all the way, baby.

I believe what I love about Darcy is that he is the quintessential strong silent type. He is the ultimate gentleman, no matter how rude, terse and tactless. He’s one of those men who may be disliked in public, but in private, treats his lady like a queen.  He often sticks his foot in his mouth because he has no concept of what he should/should not say. However he managed to win over such a strong character like Elizabeth by acting on his feelings and showing her how much he cared for her– by taking care of her family.

I don’t think another male character has ever been more gruff and aloof but endearing to me. Maybe he is the epitome of wanting what you cannot have.

From Goodreads:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s witty comedy of manners–one of the most popular novels of all time–that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Renowned literary critic and historian George Saintsbury in 1894 declared it the “most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author’s works,” and Eudora Welty in the twentieth century described it as “irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.”

30 Days of Books- Day 14: Fave book by fave author

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GAH  I AM HAVING THE SHAKES. Asking me to pick a favorite is something like cruel and unusual punishment. I swear, I don’t have a favorite! SIGH.

Well. I’ll go with an author that I’ve read A LOT of, and that would be Mr John Grisham. My favorite book from his repertoire would have to be The Broker.

From GoodReads:

In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.

Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive—there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?

I had felt like Grisham’s writing was ‘off’ for awhile, but when The Broker came out, I was hooked from page one. It was truly a page turner, deeply suspenseful and entertaining. A 4 star book and  rarely give 4 or 5 stars!  The other book that I almost picked was The Partner, another very suspenseful read.