Also, if you happened to like my short story prompt The Storm, it was entered into the January contest at Prompted to Write. Voting is open, so if you could please go vote for MissM!

Since I wrote today, I kind of dont want to look at the computer anymore. Off I go to enjoy my evening!

So, what comprises my word count? Whatever I write on purpose, for pleasure. I include updates to current WIPs, drabbles, writing exercises, book reviews, and blog posts that aren’t written for a specific purpose like some kind of commercial post (which I never do anyway). I also don’t include short ‘hi, bye’ posts. My word count isn’t suffering so I don’t feel the need to waste time sending that through a word counter.

I’ve been doing a TON of writing at work– revamping our website and rewriting all of the content, updating the graphics, etc –and if I could count all of that, my word count would be outrageous. However, that’s writing that I’ve done for work as part of my job and that doesn’t really count for GYWO. I wouldn’t want to count all that anyway, then work writing would fill up my word count and I wouldn’t feel challenged or compelled to write for myself.

So tomorrow the count starts over at ’0′ (figuratively, I’ve no intention of moving my physical counter back, it’s come so far!) and I’ve got to get on the ball with more writing. I feel kind of uninspired lately and oddly I feel this way whenever I spend a lot of time talking to people who are further along this writing journey than I am. I don’t know if it’s a need I have to feel like I’m ahead of someone, or if I feel subconscious competition, or if I just feel like I’ll never be able to do what others are doing but… I always go through a period of doldrums, so I’ve cut myself off from that. I do best when I keep my eyes on my own paper.

As for any ideas of publishing… they’re far off as well. I’ll definitely keep trying to get short stories, etc published but “Same Time Next Week” is in danger of even being finished, let alone published. Not to mention that there’s no way I could even self publish that story. It’s entirely too graphic and I’d be embarrassed. It will sit at the archives and will continue to be my ‘I let it all hang out and I’m proud of it’ piece. Maybe sometime I’ll finish it, I just… I got nothin’ right now. Less than nothin’.

Only thing I do have is a whole month with which to fill with writing! Yay.

Pen in hand,

Last night as I was tiptoe-ing through my Google Reader, I opened a post from a writer I’ve been following. She’s currently editing a book and sent out some queries and is trying to get published. She posted last night about a website that she found the is sort of an auto-editor. It looks out for things like cliche’s, overused words, sentence structure, all things I wouldn’t normally look at, when I’m editing. I’m always more concerned with does it make sense, do you care about my characters, are there any misspellings?

Well. WHOA, mama. The wesbite is called AutoCrit and it does some things I’ve never seen a website DO! This is, of course, not made for a rough draft or even first pass, but if you’re past the point of seeing your faults, this will definitely show you new ones!

I love constructive criticism (concrit). I want my pieces to read the best that they can and if people can see where there is a flaw, I want to fix it. I don’t want strangers pointing out my literary failures, if that makes any sense. So, even though I had just written the beginning of a new chapter in my (hopefully) novel, I plugged in the first 800 words and waited for the result. When it popped up, my eyes lit RIGHT UP.

Suddenly I was seeing things I hadn’t ever seen before. How many times I use certain words; whether or not I used too many -ly words (I rarely do) how many times I use ‘just’ (which I’ve been trying to get away from, but in an 800 word sample I used it 8 times! EIGHT! I feel like the clouds just parted and the sun came out. STUFF I CAN DO TO MAKE IT BETTER!

Of course, that’s only the free version, which limits you to five times a day at 800 words a pop. For shorter pieces, and if you’re only concerned about the basics, it’d do you fine. I’m salivating over the option to upload up to 100,000 words in that baby and have it spit out a report.

But first, I have to FFFFIIIINNNIIISSSHHHH IIITTTTT. GUH! I cannot seem to get going on this thing. I think I’m freaking myself out by thoughts that this might actually turn into a book. I waiver between thinking it’s really very good and I’m impressed with myself and then thinking it’s so dumb, no one will want to even look at it. Put it away and move on. No matter what, I don’t want my parents to know about this book. They are religious and it is…. It’s uhm. Explicit. Holy Gah… if my mom ever…*passes out*.

Hoookay. Well. Since I have a book to write, I am going to skiddadle and get to writing. I’ve written about 1000 words this weekend, which is completely underwhelming for me. I’ve found everything to do BUT write, and it shows.

Pen in hand,

I’m not all that upset about it. I didn’t know, really, what I was going to write on. It just sounded like a good idea. And since I already have an original fiction project I need to be working on, it’s not like I’m abandoning anything. I feel good about it and feel a little less anxious removing that from my projects list.

I had a good talk with one of my writer friends yesterday. She is the second person to tell me that I should definitely un-fanfic my NaNo piece and try to turn it into a novel.

“Really?” I said. “I was thinking about never looking at it, ever again.”

“Well you are wrong,” she said, “to think that.”

So, maybe. I don’t know. It’s still unfinished and I’m really uninspired and unmotivated to finish it. I haven’t even planned out the ending. It would be totally easy to push out a few chapters and finish it off. I just can’t seem to get to it.

I’m considering writing a short story to enter into the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers Contest. 3000 words or fewer, due at the end of February, to be posted in the Glimmer Train publication in April. That’s more my speed, and I’m currently aiming at getting something published, even if it’s someplace small. Considering I’ve never read the publication, I’m not sure if my writing is skilled enough to be printed but I won’t know until I try, no?

I’ve totally lost my oomph for my writing prompt for the Author Culture  Spin the Wheel contest. Entries aren’t due till Feb 12th, though, so… if I just buckle down and write something I could get something out. I just do not have enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do, read everything I want to read, keep up on what my peers are doing and show support, write everything I want to write and still have a life.  I don’t like rushing through this process. Something has got to give.

Ugh. It is 6:45. Morning seems to be the only time I can get any time to blog anymore. I really wish my writing made money and I could do it full time! Till then,

Hi ho, hi ho,

Well. Now I’ve gone and done it. I got an email in my box this morning about a  ”Novel Big Bang” challenge. It’s 20,000 words of original fiction. Rough drafts would be due in July. Posting would be in October. Since I have a hurking, lurking word count goal this year, that would definitely help. And it would give me great practice for NaNoWriMo in November.

I don’t have any idea what I’m going to write. It has to be original, no fanfiction. I’m scared! Lol.

Maybe I’ll use the prompt wheel and flesh some things out, see what feels like it could expand into 20,000 words. For NaNo I didn’t get my storyline until a week or two before it started.

I have no idea what I’m doing. *eep*

Lazy Sunday. I’m experiencing another lazy weekend morning. I woke up, on my own, around 7am. Hasn’t happened in awhile.  I remember when I used to wake up at 5 am, easily.

I used the peace and quiet to edit a prompt I had entered into a contest. I wasn’t going to edit it, but I thought I’d better not try to act like I’m perfect or anything. Writers can be incredibly narcissistic. My words are golden, because I wrote them. I don’t want to delete any of them! In the end, the feedback was useful and I managed to add some things, move some things around, make sense of it all. I think. I hope.

I have yet to begin work on my 2nd prompt, due February 16th. I had some ideas but I just haven’t started writing it yet. Hopefully I can get some quiet time today to contemplate, get something down so it can be edited later. Maybe I need the pressure of a deadline? Need to get started though. Give it time to marinate. 

I’m having a really good writing month so far, as you can tell by my GYWO Word Count tracker in my side bar. Coming along, coming along. Really only because I’m counting my blogs, too, but 500 words on a blog is a drop in the bucket. I have to get back to my long form WIP’s sometime today. And I’ve yet to even start chapter 2 of Caged Bird Singing. I’m just… blocked or something. I don’t know. I think maybe I think my premise is stupid.

I feel like I have this long list of things I have to do and I’m not making any progress.  I keep chipping away at it but it keeps growing. It’s starting to stress me out. And when I stress out, writing becomes less fun and more work and then I don’t feel like doing it. I think what I need to do, to feel more accomplished, is finish something. Concentrate on one thing and do it. And then move on to something else.

My only problem, when I do that, is tunnel vision. I stop reading books, I stop reading other people’s work, I stop doing all the things that inspire me. My writing gets lazy and dull, it has no shine or brilliance or introspection. It reads like a diary entry and not like a novel.

I hate that.

Where is the balance?

Yesterday I had two friends read my short, posted in the entry just below this one. I had expressed some disappointment that in all three of the places that I posted this entry, I got no feedback on it at all. Either people didn’t read it or people didn’t like it. If they didn’t read it, did it seem boring? Too long? Not their genre? If they didn’t like it, why not? Predictable? What you would expect to read, based on the photo? Nothing. So I’m left to think it’s either perfectly fine but not memorable, or positively awful and no one will tell me what makes it so awful.

Anyway, it was nice to get some concrit on it, and after a good night’s sleep I edited it some to bring out the points we discussed. I tried to expand it, but the words just didn’t come. In the end, I left the length pretty much intact, and tried to sharpen the words that were there.  I even managed to delete some. Saying more with fewer words. Progress.

I’ve got to get out of bed and get my day going, or I’ll be here all day. The earlier I start on my list, the sooner I can get to my writing. YAY.

Pen in hand,

The Assignment:

You’re out having a picnic and suddenly, you feel an incredible calm.  You look up to the sky and the clouds are shifting in a menacing way.  What’s going on? Who were you with?  What happens now?

Give us 100 words (or more, if you like) and be sure to share if you blog it!

The Inspiration:

Courtesy Flickr.com

Final Draft.

The day started out normal, I guess. Same as any other day.

Me and Jeb got up early, before sunrise, to do the work in the barn before he headed off to the fields for the day. Jeb milked the cows while I mucked the stalls. We both gathered fresh eggs from the small flock of chickens we kept in the coop. By the time the sun was peeking up over the horizon like soft pink arms stretching out over the cornfields, kissing the leaves of the trees and drying the dew on the grass, we were on our way back to the house, hauling two full wicker baskets.

Jeb went around back to use the washtub behind the house while I busied myself getting something hot on the table—fresh eggs, fried potatoes and onions, a few slices of ham if we had any leftover from dinner the night before. The tinkle of brass clasps on Jeb’s overalls and the heavy plodding of his boots let me know he was dressed and would be heading to the kitchen shortly. Jeb usually had just a few minutes between dressing and heading out the door to sit and eat. I indulged in a few spare minutes to eat with him, watching him gulp strong black coffee and shovel food into his mouth.

“Gon’  be a hot one today,” I mused. I could already feel the heat seeping through the window panes above the kitchen sink. A triple digit day, I figured.

Jeb nodded, chewing a mouthful of food, his eyes following mine to the view of clear blue skies and a light wind rocking the branches on the oak tree in the middle of the yard. “Supposed to get a storm in, soon. That’ll be good. Crops need it.”

“Ours and Riley’s,” I said, nodding my agreement. Jeb worked for Jacob Riley, a farmer who lived a mile or so away from the small patch of land we called home. The Riley Farm supplied most of the town with its corn and wheat as well as fresh fruits and vegetables. It wasn’t what he wanted to be doing, but Jeb was determined to keep a roof over our heads and food on our table. Besides, sometimes Riley let the field hands take the surplus home. I ain’t had to plant a tomato in… Lord, I couldn’t remember how long.

I hummed a soft tune, one familiar to both of us, picking at the remnants of egg and potatoes on my plate, dreading the tick of the clock when the big hand would reach the nine and Jeb would push away from the table, set his empty plate into the sink, and then bend to drop a kiss on my cheek. His breath would smell like coffee and potatoes. His tone would be light and cheerful. His steps, though, would be slow and heavy as his boots clomped along the wood floor toward the front door. Field work was hard, back breaking work, but it was work all the same.

I rose from the table with a sigh, leaving my plate where it sat. Would be plenty of time for cleaning up after Jeb was gone for the day.

“You don’t work too hard, now,” I said, teasing as I did every morning, adjusting the strap of his overalls as he pulled them over broad shoulders and snapped them closed. “You know Jacob Riley don’t care none if you get overtired or break somethin’. He’ll just replace you.”

“Yes ma’am,” Jeb would always answer. “You know I do my best to come home to ya everyday.”

“Well. You just make sure today is the same as any other day, and we’ll be fine.”

After Jeb left for the day, I started in on my chores. I had a nice little routine of things I did on certain days of the week. Kept me from having to clean all day every day, and gave some variety to my schedule. Since it was Tuesday, it was wash day, so I gathered up all of Jeb’s sweat stained t-shirts and overalls with dirt crusted into the cuffs. I would also pull up the rugs and stir the dust around. Spring and summer had been so dry, it seemed like the air was just full of dust. At night it settled and during the day it kicked up again. I was almost about to give up on it.

I hummed and sang and did my chores, making good progress on my list. It was such a nice day that I thought I’d take an extra long break, pack a lunch in a basket and steal away to the fields just beyond the house. My sister up in St Louis had sent me some books. Some adult story books. I was a little ashamed at first to show them to Jeb, but she got me hooked on them when we went up to visit her and her husband. I read every one she had in the house and when she got a new one, she’d send it along to me. I was waiting for a nice day, when I could get a long break and go reading. At about one o’clock, I set out with my lunch and did just that.

I found my favorite spot, on a flat piece of land where the grass was still a little bit green and soft, and sat with my back up against the trunk of what was probably a hundred year old tree. I had packed a sandwich of leftover ham and cheese and some sliced tomatoes from Riley’s. I set out my blanket, unpacked my lunch, and opened the latest package from Janie.

On the cover was a man, a handsome, shirtless man, with smooth, flawless skin the color of molasses and almond shaped brown eyes. He had a mustache, like Jeb’s but fuller, and hair cut close to his head, real short. “My, my, my,” I said to myself, already lost in the story of two lovers who were not meant to be, but desperately wanted to be together. Seemed like the lady in the story needed to be saved from something. Maybe herself. I liked to switch the characters out and put me in Jeb in them. Made it more real.

Time got away from me, reading that story, so much that I didn’t notice the sky changing and getting darker. I didn’t see or feel the wind picking up and blowing the grass this way and that, rustling through the leaves on the trees. It wasn’t until a cool wind snaked down my back and the scent of rain hit my nose that I looked up. A terrible pain shot through my heart. I don’t know if that pain was panic or fear, or a mix of the two.

The sky was dark. The clouds were black and looming, seeming to pile one top of the other and blow in with the wind, which was strong and growing stronger. In the distance, I saw the ugliest thing I’d seen in a while.  A few miles away, the sky was was jet black and ugly as sin. And comin’ straight at me, loud and fast as a runaway freight train.

“Bad storm’s comin’,” I said aloud to no one. In a hurry, I gathered the rest of my lunch, my blanket, and my book and headed toward the house, barely able to breath through the gusts of wind. It seemed like every time I looked up, that ugly patch was even closer than it was a few seconds before.

Normal rain weren’t no thing for us. We’d hole up in the house around the fire, listening to the drops hit the roof and pitterpatter of the edge into puddles around the house. Once it was over, we went on with our lives.

A heavy rain with a mighty force of wind and an evil sky meant trouble. Maybe even a twister. I ain’t seen one of them in a long time… not since the one that took my daddy when I was nine.

I ran to the house, our little shack on a few acres of land, just barely sturdy enough to withstand coming storm. I dumped my basket on the porch steps and headed toward the barn. The cows were agitated, milling around, moo’ing at me like I knew what they was saying. Them dummies didn’t even know to get back into the barn. I had to shoo ‘em in there, along with the chickens, and close the door behind them, then get to the house and close up all the windows and wait for Jeb to come home. He’d likely wait out the storm at Riley’s. If there was daylight left when it was over, Jeb would lead the team in scouring over the crops to get an idea of the damage.

It was starting to rain, and rain hard. Not just a drip-drip-drip rain, but a hard driving, hurts-when-it-hits-your-body rain. It was almost dark as night now, but I knew it couldn’t be no later than two o’clock. I managed to get everyone of them dumb animals into the barn but I couldn’t get the door closed. The wind was powerful and fierce, blowing the door open at the same time I was pushing it closed. I pushed and pushed at it, using the power of my backside against the worn, painted wood, my feet sinking into the mud that formed when the clay dirt got too soggy and waterlogged. I cringed as mud crept over my shoes, soaking my feet through my socks.

The sky seemed to come wide open and exhale, right over our little house, sending gusts  to kick up dirt and mud and objects we kept around the yard– buckets and baskets, tools and jars. They flew past me, swirling around me until they hit something hard and sturdy and busted into pieces. Then the pieces got picked up, carried on high winds, sending sharp bits of shrapnel into my face.

Soaking wet, so cold I was numb, and covered in mud, I managed to close and latch the double wide doors and rushed around to the side of the barn. Jeb kept a long plane of wood that he would slide between the two handles, keeping the door closed and our animals inside. Just as I found and reached for it, I heard a long, loud crreeeeaaaakkkkkk and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the barn door flying open, going faster than I could run.

I remembered seeing it coming. I remembered trying to shield myself with my arms. I remember screaming, “Lord, help me!” loud as I could, in case he couldn’t hear my prayers over the howling wind and the driving rain and the breaking glass. I remember the sound of the wood as it sped toward me and splintered on impact, and searing pain upside my head and down my right side. I remember the sick pop I felt and heard in my wrist as I hit the ground.

I remember wishing Jeb was home.

I don’t know how long I laid there in the mud and the wind and the cold,  the rain filling every dip in the yard, those puddles spilling over and running like little rivers around my body.  I just remember not feeling anymore pain. Not feeling cold or wet.  I remember dreaming.

I dreamt a scene from that book I was reading, where that handsome man came and found me, picked me up and carried me to safety, took care of the open,  bleeding gash in my head and my swollen wrist, probably broken. He removed the muddy, wet clothes and laid me close to the fire so I could warm up. It was a nice dream.

Piece by piece, I started to wake up, except I wasn’t still outside in the yard. And that weren’t no dream. Jeb had come.

I was in my house. Our house. I was warm. There was a fire going and I was lying on the cot closest to the heat. I had nothing on but my underclothes but I was clean and dry. I looked around for a minute, seeing the glowing fire and feeling the warmth and more importantly, the pain when I tried to move my head, my stuttered breath catching Jeb’s attention.

“You just lay still, Carolyn,” he said softly, moving to my side, his big soft hand stroking my cheek. “Lay right there and don’t move. You don’t need to be movin’ around.”

“I believe I’ll rest, just this once,” I said, smiling up at his face hanging over mine, rivers of worry etched into his forehead.

“You gon’ be alright? Riley sent us all home when the wind let up some. ‘Bout scared me to death to find you layin’ out there in the mud.”

I nodded as best I could, despite the dull throb in my head Felt like someone was hammering something on my right side. “I’m gon’ be fine,” I answered. Then smiled and said, “My hero come to save me.”

His face was stern, but playfully so. “Been readin’ them books again, I see.”

I tried to laugh but a stabbing feeling pain through my head. I smiled through the grimace. “Yeah. So? What’s it matter to ya?”

He laughed, the sound bouncing around the small room and echoing in my head. “You say you always put me in the story. I guess as long as I’m always the hero in ‘em, don’t matter none at all.”

Jeb fussed with the bandage on my head and the sling he had created for my wrist, humming the same soft tune from earlier in the day. With my good hand and my good eye, I caught his attention. Looking at him, my throat closed up a little bit and a tear come to my eye.

Maybe Jeb didn’t have almond shaped eyes and long pretty black lashes and smooth skin the color of molasses, but he was my hero.  I had come close to leaving him that day. And as hard as life was for us, I do believe that either of us living life without the other would be double hard. I believe that as much as I believe anything.

I made it a point to look my handsome man in his small, dark brown eyes, and hold his hand, admiring the walnut colored skin that had been hardened and weathered by the sun he endured to keep us afloat. To keep us together. To keep us a family.

“Don’t matter how many of them books I read,” I whispered. “You gon’ always be my hero, Jeb Clark. Always.”

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sugar starts with a bang and ends with a heartfelt gasp.

At the beginning of Bernice McFadden’s Sugar, we don’t meet Sugar. We meet Jude, so to speak. Jude is the ghost in the story, the crux of every emotional scene in the novel. Jude is the murdered child of Pearl, a woman who befriends her next door neighbor that happens to go by the name ‘Sugar’.

Sugar is what polite people call a woman of ill repute and what not-so-polite people call a whore or a prostitute, blowing into the town of Bigelow on the wind of a powerful storm. The people of Bigelow are simple and quiet, a little bit superstitious and a whole lot judgemental. It seems like Pearl is the only person that really see Sugar for who she is… perhaps because Pearl is about the most naive person in Bigelow.

Pearl is a mere shell of the woman she used to be. Since Jude’s death, she had withdrawn into herself and her sadness. She’d once asked God to allow her to die, but he refused. Pearl guessed God had more work for her to do. Pearl was right. From the moment they meet, Pearl and Sugar are nearly inseparable. They eat together laugh together, and share a strange bond and a kinship that neither understand but both truly enjoy. For Sugar, it’s about having a friend where she used to have none. For Pearl, it’s much deeper.

Sugar, you see, looks amazingly, almost identically, like Jude.

For the first time in over fifteen years (the amount of years that had passed since Jude’s death in 1940), Pearl was smiling and laughing, responding to her husband in ways she hadn’t in so many years. Through her friendship with Sugar, Pearl sheds her graying hair and wrinkling face, stooped over posture and overall defeated, small, shy countenance. Sugar brings life and youth and vigor, again.

This bond, however, comes at a price. Sugar has a long, drawn out history, full of women who taught her that her body was for the pleasure of men and that alone, and men who confirmed this belief at every turn. Sugar does not know her mother or her father, choosing to create ties with the women that run the brothels where she works. She has spent her life wandering the country from Detroit to St Louis and back to Arkansas, perhaps in search of something, but not knowing what that something is until she finds it– family. Pearl would lose friendships over Sugar. Her life would change as a result of befriending her neighbor the Whore. People would talk, as they do in small towns. Reputations would be destroyed. But the bond would not break.

Sugar is set in the mid century 1900′s and bounces between Bigelow and Short Junction, Arkansas- Bigelow being the present, Short Junction being the past. McFadden weavers her characters through the lives of Pearl and Sugar effortlessly. As I was reading, it was like watching the film reel in my mind. As details of Sugar’s past come to light, the connection between Pearl and her husband Joe, and Sugar seem to rise slowly from the murky deep of a twisted tale. The men that Sugar knows and the secrets that she holds would bind them all together for life.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. it was a quick read, though it wasn’t intended to be… I just kept turning pages so I could find out what happened when Pearl’s friends tried to run her out of town, or when Sugar dressed Pearl up and took her to the Juke Joint, called Memphis Roll, or when Sugar’s on again off again John-cum-wannabe boyfriend threatens her. I wanted to see Sugar make the changes that Pearl longed to see in her, and I wanted to rejoice at Pearl coming into her own, again.

This story is somewhat formulaic and in many ways it isn’t. I always try to form an idea of how the story will end. How these people are all intertwined and why they matter to each other– why are all of these characters in this story? Who are they and why do I care? Only one of my predictions came true, and I didn’t come to my conclusion until well into 3/4ths of the novel. To me, that’s a writer that does a great job of concealing the end of the plotline. And just when you think that the story will end and nothing will happen as you think it’s going to happen, there’s a tiny little twist… a photo. A wordless addition that explains everything. The bond, the connection, and why Sugar looks like Jude.

I almost didn’t see it coming.

If I had one complaint… okay well two… the bounces between past and present were very jolting. Flashbacks are difficult to do, or so I’ve been told, and they didn’t come across very well, to me. I often had to reread paragraphs to realize that the author had returned to the story in Bigelow. The second was the hairturn transition of Sugar from Whore to near Madonna and back to Whore. Having her on again off again John utter a few nasty phrases to her seemed like a weak trigger, to me. I also felt a little unfulfilled regarding his confession, his attack on her, and Sugar’s refusal to bring him to justice. I disagreed with her reasons for not doing that. I felt it would have brought closure to a family so heavily haunted by a senseless murder.

That said, I enjoyed this book so much that I’ve already purchased the 2002 followup- This Bitter Earth. It continues the story of Sugar after she leaves Bigelow and the comfort and Safety of Pearl and Joe. I can’t wait to read it!

View all my reviews >>

Hi there. So I was sifting through my Google reader this morning and I came upon an entry at AuthorCulture about a writing contest. I’ve been thinking about doing prompts again, getting myself to write shorter pieces, short stories, even seeing if I can get some published or reposted about the net. There are writing contests everywhere– I just read a great entry at Writer’s Digest by a blogger that I follow, Cheryl Angst. It’s a great piece that made me laugh out loud.

Anyhoo. So, on AuthorCulture, they linked to this prompt generator called The BrainStormer (click on the image to go the site):

It’s pretty neat… you just spin the wheel and you get three words as your prompt. Don’t like ‘em? Spin again! It’s fun!  So I spun! And I got my prompt words:

Adultery     Small town    clock

Ooooh I already have ideas. So my piece has to be 750 to 1000 words. Ya’ll know how wordy I am, so therein lies the challenge. Wrap that baby up in fewer than 100,000 words!

I’m excited! I may not enter the contest because the theme has to be very PG, no blatant sexual content. We’ll see what I can do. I’m a genius at writing AROUND sex. Lol.

Okay but first I have to get to work, and I have some personal stuff to take care of, too so off I go!

Pen in hand,

So today I dug out the few thousand words I wrote before I shelved it and have already begun rewriting and reshaping it. I believe I have a good start for my rough draft. I need to put it somewhere so I can stop messing with it and move on to new territory– Chapter 2. Dun dun duuuuuuuunnnnnnn.

I’m doing something I never do on this blog and posting a WIP (Work in Progress). Just ’cause. *shrug*

Title: Tentative Caged Bird Singing
Genre: Fiction, possibly YA
Synopsis: Rachelle is one of eight children, but has never been one to blend in. She’s always been a rebel, doing things her own way, including pushing forward with her dream to sing despite her parents wishes.

Summary: Rachelle Nixon is a superstar: rich, famous, talented, world renowned– in her mind. She has a dream, and that is to sing. She has an obstacle– two of them– and those are her parents. Rachelle feels stuck, trapped by her family and held down by her responsibility to them, caged by her parent’s expectations of her. What she wants most is take the chance of a lifetime and sing her heart out– instead she’s working at a record store and playing mommy to five younger siblings while her parents work to keep the family afloat. When Rachelle’s chance comes, she jumps at it, though the odds are stacked against her. She’s “discovered” by a slick, smooth talking manager with a lot of big names under his belt and high powered connections who claims he can her into pop stardom. Overnight, Rachelle is living the life she’s always wanted to live, believing at first that it’s her dream come true. Slowly– and way too late– Rachelle learns that that the music business isn’t much about music, and no one comes out the way they went in.

Phase: Writing:
Status: Incomplete
Linky: Ch1- CBS