The Sweet Escape

I hestitate to even type this, because it seems like a reverb of posts before it… things I’m gonna do, things I want to do, goals I want to hit, blah blah blah. I guess this is another one of those posts, because the things I want to do aren’t getting done.

I had to admit to a friend yesterday that I was jealous of her. There she was, minding her own business, when an opportunity to write a column opened up and she went for it. She hasn’t spent the last 2 years honing her craft, writing hundreds of thousands of words, poring over her writing, worrying over content, biting nails over reviews, tearing her hair out over being ‘good enough’. She just….inquired. And was hired.

Her first article was printed yesterday. Nationwide release. It’s fabulous. I love her and I’m WILDLY proud of her but also so jealous I could spit nails and mad. At myself. (more…)

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,

Over at my personal blog, Diary of Curvy Jones, I run a fun Friday event called the Friday Five.

Every Friday I post five questions. You answer them on your blog and then post your link so other people will read it. Write as much or as little as you want. Use it as a prompt, if you wish! Then, link back to the diary so’s people know where they can see everyone else’s answers. Simple. as. that.

Have some fun, answer some questions! The Friday Five

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.  (more…)

… and a Happy New Year!

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.