I Feel Like A Winner

A day earlier than I've ever "won" before, I hit 50K last night on my NaNoWriMo projects! Hooray!

Yes, there were two. My bad. In my defense, I didn't drop one project and leap to the next, I juggled both. Interface is sitting over 48K (the beginning 11K of which was from 2010 and didn't count), and Trust 3 is at 14K. For the most part,  I plugged away at Interface so my daughter wouldn't keep glaring at me for working on Trust 3. When she wasn't around, I wrote whichever was speaking to me at the time. I'm happy with how both projects are coming along.

Not only did I finish a day earlier than my nine previous efforts, I didn't feel like I spent every available moment having to write and stressing about it. It was great to enjoy writing again and not feel like it was an overwhelming task that loomed over me all month. While both stories are very rough, I wasn't slogging through vast swaths of suck that were never going to amount to something I could work with, which has happened twice. It was great to see that I could return to writing novels again at long last! Not focusing on shorts, and not editing novels I'd written in the past, but birthing new novels. That I enjoyed working on. I was really beginning to wonder if I'd ever get back to this point so this is especially rewarding.

This week, I even took a night and morning off and read a book. During NaNo. Yes, the whole book, because that's what I do. I slept in that twelve hours span too. Okay, I slept a little, mostly I read. Because I could. And it felt great!

What made the difference this year? In order:

Not building a house - had time to think coherent thoughts that were not house building related.

Having help at work - far less stress when I'm not days behind with work

Kids are mostly self sufficient - one is driving so only half the usual mom taxi duty for me

Fallout 4 - thank you video game makers who release games during November that keep my husband occupied.

So what's next? In no particular order:

Finish Interface

Finish Trust 3

Finish editing Sahmara

While I'm working on those three things, I'm also bouncing around on blogs. You can find me here:

Scattergun Scribblings - Nick Wilford was gracious enough to allow me over to chat about A Broken Race.

ElizaGalesInterviews - Where I answer interesting questions like which author should survive a virus that wipes the rest of us out.

Authors Answer - Where we share our other creative pursuits beyond writing.

Lectito - Week three check in for five NaNoWriMo participants.

Writing Challenge: Where do I find the time?

I've been pondering this idea for a few years, but those years, being what they were did not allow for a day to myself, or often, even an hour. However, this year, I seem to finally have my crap (generally) together and can focus on writing. At least a mostly. Life is still there. Which brings me to the challenge.

Write fifteen minutes for each hour for one day. I wanted to see how far this would get me. Would I get burnt out? Would life happen and ruin my plans? Perhaps this was the perfect solution to getting my attention span back and improving my focus. I'm so used to multitasking that just sitting and doing one thing for more than a few minutes at time starts to make me edgy. Surely I should be doing something else, there's so much to do, and here I am writing instead of doing those hundreds of other things buzzing around in my head.

November, being deep into NaNoWriMo as we are now, seemed to perfect time to indulge myself in a day of sporadic writing. And so I enjoyed a leisurely morning (because, hey, I'm indulging myself, right?) and was ready to get the day going at 10am.

At 10am I start the laundry, wash the dishes, check my work email and make and eat breakfast with the family.

Then I slink down to my office and write for fifteen minutes, gaining 662 words.

I lose the next forty-five minutes checking my own email, texting and visiting my usual haunts on the internet. That was fast.

Time to write again. 449 words

I'm going to make an apple pie because the kids keep forgetting to put the now soft apples in their lunches. Oh, homemade apple pie! That sounds so good. I reach for my spare bag of flour, and knock a new glass bottle of olive oil off the top shelf. It shatters on the tile, spraying olive oil and tiny glass shards all over my kitchen floor. I spend the next hour and half cleaning oil and glass off my floor. Though I do get the oven preheating. There's something.

Grumble as I write 480 words

Actually make the apple pie, steam clean the tile, clean up the kitchen, put away the now dry dishes and the laundry.

Write 550 words

Take the pie out of the oven, and make up the fifteen minutes I lost when taking too much time to clean up the olive oil the first time around.

Write 349 words

Take a deep breath of the warm apple pie and drive off to visit with family who live seven minutes away. I can totally squeeze this in. But the quick visit turns into hours because: talking. Check the clock when I get home and swear a little.

Write 368 flustered words while thinking of all the make up time that I now have to do.

Play one quick game on my phone

Write 312 words

Damn, time to do my regular writing fifteen minutes again. 457 words

Write and submit content for the December Authors Answer blog posts.

Another make up session 471 words

Take a break and play on my phone for ten minutes, notice time ticking. Grumble again.

Write 315 words

Check work emails again

Write 399 words

Wander the internet. Yawn and realize now it's after 10pm

Write 430 words and call it a night.

Adding up my efforts, I realize I managed to write 5,242 words without any mad scramble during my fifteen minutes (which was interrupted with phone calls and dogs demanding to go out on a couple occasions). I also still managed to do everything non-writing related I wanted to do for the day.

I'm quite happy with how the day went and how much writing I got done. Would I want to do that every day? No. Forty-five minutes goes really fast when you're watching the clock. However, it feels good to know that I can make the time to do it if I really need to.

Good luck to all you seekers of 50K this month! May the words be with you.

Busy Writing and Trying to Be Good

Over the last two days my NaNo Novel went from fairly organized and on track to spewing out the dialogue in a 'let's figure out out plan as we bounce ideas of what the hell is going on' back and forth nine page extravaganza of ping pong.

That's going to take some work to make readable later on, but it's been great to brainstorm on the page inside these two heads. I've learned a lot about these two boys and their past and how that's going to help them get out of this mine I've sent them to as slaves.

My goals for this story are to keep the swearing to a minimum, not kill anyone, and no sex. It's been hard since that's against my default writing mode. So far we've had mild cursing and overheard sex. Time will tell if I can pull this off. 

Along with Authors Answer - this week we talk about whether we'd jump on the popular genre bandwagon - I'm also participating on Lectito, as one of five NaNo participants sharing our weekly progress throughout November. I hope you'll drop by both blogs and give them a read.

Now, back to this game of dialogue ping pong.

The Words are Flowing!

NaNoWriMo is here and the words are flowing fast and furious. In hopes of many more words than would normally be cranked out this month, we're at war with Dayton Ohio. May the wordiest region win.

If you'd like to join in the writing fun, create an account and find the region nearest you. There may be a war going on that you aren't aware of, fellow writers that need your words, your story that needs your words. Okay, so really its about your story needing to be written. Go write your story!

I found time to read a book.

This is a wonderful thing. It's even a book there's no way in hell I can finish in a day. Or two. Maybe three if all I did was read.

I've been saving Stephen King's Under The Dome for over a year. It came to me from a box of books meant for the book resale store, but happened to be on the top and land in my hands before it made it there. Not usually a King fan, I had actually been interested in this one because of the tv show. Another show that I haven't had time to see. I'll get there eventually. But first the book. Because that's how it should be done. (because I said so.)
As I said, I'm not normally a King fan. I've tried. I wanted to be. I mean, he's got a lot of work out there. Unfortunately, after a promising start, it took me two years to finish Pet Sematary. It just dragged. For me, anyway. I'm sure there are readers out there who loved it. I've tried a couple others over the years but just couldn't get into them. This one, so far at least, has been great. I don't want to put it down. But at over 1,000 pages, I have to. It's heavy. And yes, I have a kindle, but I like paper on occasion, this being one of them.

The characterization is excellent. And there are a lot of characters to characterize. I can't imagine the work of getting into each one as the POV changes with every scene. And there are a lot of scenes. And people are dying left and right in all sorts of interesting ways. Even the animals aren't safe.

So while I await cover art on A Broken Race and to see what lands on the cover of the Brewed Awakenings II anthology, I'm just sitting here, percolating my NaNoWriMo project, juggling submissions and reading. Good times.

Looking for more authors to check out? This week on Authors Answer, we discuss our blogs and websites. Who knows, you might find someone new to virtually hang out with.

Guests, Gardening, and Getting prepared

August is here already. That means NaNoWriMo preparation has begun.

Pfft, Prepare? Me? Ha. I mean for my region. (Though I will admit, champion pantser that I am, I'll be working on a YA novel I recently started editing that I gave up on during NaNo years ago. It still needs a middle and and end. And I know where it's going now. Egads, does that mean I've planned for once?)

I've created this year's sticker, the word count chart, a character creation game for the kick off party, sorted give away prizes and silent auction items. I've even considered doing a couple small crafty projects. I haven't had time for those in a while, so I'm rather excited to get my hands covered in glue and paint.

While I occasionally remember to stalk my submissions, I'm keeping busy with projects around the house. Now that we're all settled in, there's all the little things, like sealing the grout for all the floor tile, caulking the guest room tub, finding homes for the few things left in boxes, finishing up the stone work on the front of the house, installing the railing on the deck, and landscaping. That last one is my favorite. I've been waiting anxiously. Since last fall. I'm really sick of waiting. Today, the last load of top soil arrived, so barring rain, I'll be spending my weekend playing in the dirt.

As far as writing, I haven't started anything new lately. I'm waiting on edits on three shorts and a novel, all of which could arrive in my inbox anytime and two of them will require a quick turnaround. Best to save my limited writing time for when I really need it and enjoy expending my creative energy on other pursuits for just a little while.

July passed by in a blur of fun. We had a great time hosting our Spanish guest, who gave us the perfect excuse to visit places around town we hadn't been to in years. Our daughter got to have a month of mostly vacation that we would have otherwise worked through and maybe done one or two things as time allowed. Funny how having a stranger in your house makes you spend so much more time together as a family, and I was surprised how attached we got to her in the few weeks she was here. Sending her off wasn't easy, but we would definitely host another student next year if asked.

For now, I'll leave you with this week's Author's Answer: What scenes do you find difficult to write?

November In Review

It was an eventful November to say the least. Hectic sums it up nicely.

Your picture taking has awoken me, worthless human! Now go away so I may sleep more, and then you shall serve me more food and clean my litter box and let me out if I so choose, but I shan't be rushed in my choosing. If you do not do these things, I shall knock another glass off your counter and watch in amusement as it shatters on the tile floor. Mwhahahaha.

We now have a cat. Sort of. It decided this was its home. He had a home at one point because he showed up with a collar. But this skinny young fellow gets along well with our dog and he wasn't micro chipped or reported missing. He's a beautiful tabby, sadly not neutered or declawed, which means he has to be watched carefully because he seems to think my newly recovered couch is a scratching post.

When I sent him out with a note taped to his collar inquiring whether he had an owner, he came back without a collar. I guess that means I touched him last so now he lives here. We weren't really seeking a cat, being dog people now, but the new owner of this house does want a cat, so we're cat sitting, in our house, that isn't really our house anymore, for a guy who wants the cat. We'll enjoy him in the meantime.

The early feet of snow have melted and we're back to frozen but not covered in snow, which is normal for this time of year. This means work on the siding of the new house can continue. Hooray for that.

My unexpected two-week sleeping-on-my-writing-couch house guest has left, though my two week cold lingers with a nasty chest cough. I'm really sick of coughing.

NaNoWriMo has come to an end for another year. My goal was 10K. I ended up feeling pretty happy with my effort ending at 25K for the amount of time I had to write. Both stories I was working on have promise, they just need my full attention - which no one has right now.

Work has picked to an insane pace, as is usual with the holidays approaching. This means my days go something like this:

Wake up
Work
Run kids around after school
Work on house
Go to bed

Occasionally there's time for a rinse, mostly it's a repeat.

Dream Interview

This week on Authors answer: If you could interview any author, who would it be and what question would you ask?

This week in NaNo progress: Not much progress. I managed to catch a nasty cold from the guy doing our trim work. He had sounded terrible last week, coughing and such. And now, guess what? So do I. Yay. So now the time before bed when I usually try to squeak in a few hundred words is taken up with sleeping because that's all my body wants to do after long days of work and working on the house.

House progress: The kitchen cabinets are unboxed, most of the trim in installed and most of the house is painted. Now flooring and finish plumbing are the last major projects. Then its finishing up all the other little things we've got mostly done and the exciting details like door stops and wall plates. At least it feels like the end is finally attainable. Eventually.

Character Beliefs

This week on Authors Answer: How difficult do you find it to write characters who have vastly different beliefs than you?

This week in NanoWriMo: I managed to make 10K thanks to a big write-in day on Sunday and then went for 15K and now I'm aiming for 20K. We'll see how much higher I can go. This is really frustrating for me because if I had the time I'd have 50K by now easily. My story is practically writing itself when I have the free moments to give it thought. If only I had the time to write it. Damn you, house!

It's November. You know what that means

I send you greetings from the land of NaNoWriMo. Not only am I way overwhelmed with building the house (we're installing doors and trim now, in case you're keeping track of progress), I'm again MLing for National Novel Writing Month.

Am I also writing? Sort of. The odds that I'll make it to 50K this year in the midst of all the stress I've already got going on and the time involved with organizing events and overseeing my region, are fairly slim. Instead I'm aiming for a much more attainable 10K. If I get more than that, yay me. As of this moment, I'm sitting at 1600 words.

With that already under my belt, it sounds like 10K should be no problem, except that the majority of the work on the house from this point onward is in our court. Doors, trim, cabinets, plumbing, electrical, flooring, etc. And I can't move in until that's all done. Did I mention I need to move in as soon as possible? Yeah, I kinda have my work cut out for me.

So what am I writing? Damaged takes place in the same world as Devolution (a short I wrote years ago that is currently looking for a good home).

Gabriel and Nina are thrilled to learn they are having twins until a checkup reveals that one of them is at high risk for developing violent behavior. They are given a termination notice. Not knowing which of the twins is defective, the couple is not willing to sacrifice the other. Signing a life-long contract to be responsible for all damages done by their questionable offspring, they embark on a journey to prove the prognosticators wrong.

Things Are Falling Into Place

Not house building things, but writing things. Weird how that works. It's one of those things you have to stop thinking about and then the answers just pop up.

Not thinking about not thinking about it is the hard part.

I feel I should break into a verse of Let It Go here. Don't worry, I won't. There's enough of that going on.

A new ending to Kick The Cat flowed from my fingers this morning. That's 800 new words. I haven't written new words in a very long time.

I figured out what I'm doing for the A to Z Challenge next April. Planning ahead is odd for me. Well, planning that far ahead, I mean. But it's the perfect lead in to A Story A Day In May. I'm going to do opening paragraph of short stories from prompts provided in the comments, then finish the stories in May. At least, that's what the voices in my head tell me I'm going to do.

Then, just as I was panicking over far too many things, one of which included, what the hell am I going to write for NaNo this year while in the middle of house stuff / packing / moving???? The story came to me. Plop, here you go. Now shut up and go panic about something else.

Can't argue with that. It may be a short, or a novella or the rough draft of a novel, depending on how much time I have. I've done the 50K thing for 7 years. The thought of sitting out for number 8 irks me, but we'll see what necessity demands.

It's sci-fi, concerns twins, one of which will grow up to be a killer, two parents who just want to do the right thing and the medical staff who doesn't want to see the kids born.

Nano 2013 Progress - Wrap up

After reaching 40K NaNo seems like a downhill run. Writing 2 to 3K a day wasn't a problem. I reached 50K of new words on the 29th. After so many months of not having time to write, that felt really good!

The middle of this novel that had given me fits so many years ago just fell into place. It came in at 71,000 words - only 22K of which were written this November. The story still needs a few scenes and a good deal of cleaning up. Not to mention some seaming between the point I ran full force into last night and the ending I'd put in the there the first time around. The points meet up, but, yeah, need a little smoothing out.

I'm happy with the novel and the plot bits that I managed to pull together in my flurry of words. It's a simple story, which perhaps made it fun to write because it was so different than the last three novels I've wrapped up. This is one girls journey. The subplots are minimal. I'd like to get closer to 80k during the edits and polishing but we'll see where the story leads me when I get that far. I'm excited to finally introduce Sahmara to my crit group. Eventually. At least she's a lot closer than she's been for eight years.

There's a special feeling to finishing NaNo, but an even more special one to actually producing a completed story. Even if that story wasn't all written in one lump.

As to my first half of the month, Into the Blue could still work. It needs some time to percolate. Maybe even an outline so I can locate the ending and go there.

It's stalled out at the point that I've come to call "eating crackers" aka: stagnant. It's when my brain is overloaded with outside crap that eats up all my creative thoughts and turns them into drooling mush. I know what I want to write, but the words and flow just aren't there. And so, just like in last year's Jackson, my characters spend momental amounts of pages doing something trivial (which in that case was eating crackers) in the hopes that a brilliant flash of creativity will strike and the story will lurch back on track.

No flashes. Story go splat.

But all is not lost. As I learned this year, some stories just need time to work themselves out. Lots and lots of time.

Good luck to everyone still madly racing toward 50K today.

Nano 2013 Progress - Week 2 and 3

Day 13 - Work, mom taxi duties, meeting dry wall contractor, and family time = no time for writing.

Day 14 - So tired. Managed 1000 words before eyes demaned to stay closed. Word coutt: 19,004

Day 15 - Online write-in. Thank goodness. Word Count: 22,086

Day 16 - I planned to have most of the day to write. Bwhaahahah. Plan flew out the window. House stuff and work took over my day. Word Count: 23,070

Day 17 - Okay today I'm really going to buckle down and pump out the words. Oh but we have more paperwork to fill out for the house? And then focus flew out the window and it took me three freakin hours of slaming my head on the keyboard to get my daily word goal? Blarg! Word Count 24,746

Day 18 - Well the weekend sucked for writing and the story was like pulling teeth. I was more excited by the prospect of cleaning toilets than writing more of it. Stress level on other fronts is at an all time high. As much as I like this story, I need to give myself a break somewhere. This is where. I can go back to it when my percolator is again functioning correctly. Instead, I wrote a short story and then switched to working on my first NaNo Novel that I've always wanted to get back to finishing. Total new words for the month: 27,309

Day 19 - 26 - Life was too busy to even get in here to document progress. In summary:
I enjoyed my last weekly write-in not so much for the writing (of which I didn't get much done at all) but for the human interaction beyond work and house. I laughed, I laughed so hard I cried, ah, I so needed that.

I think I just might finally finish Sahmara's Sunset (my first NaNo Novel from 2006). I tried to dig into it a couple years ago and had most of the rewriting done up to chapter 5, but it had a gaping lack of a middle that intimidated me beyond words. Surprise! The middle is flowing this year. I guess some things just take time and my percolator was in for the long haul on this one.

The best NaNo decision was to switch novels. Words are flowing without the gnashing of teeth or bruising of my forehead. I'm actually enjoying what I'm writing. That's a huge step above last year and the first half of the month this year.

We're finally supposed to close on our our construction loan next week. OMG, what a long and stressful process. Also next week, a possible closing on the sale of our current house.

Writing has happened despite life also happening at a rapid pace. Current word count: 44,176. Reaching 50k looks to be on my plate after all. Maybe right next to some leftover turkey on friday. Wish me luck.

NaNo 2013 Progress - Week 1

Day 4: Wrote a couple hundred words in the morning and didn't get a chance again until spewing out almost 2k at last night's write-in. WooHoo! Still behind though. However, that's pretty usual for me.

Day 5: Planned on writing in the morning as night is going to be busy. My plan was derailed with signing a contract for a short, receiving a rejection on another and then submitting it to another magazine on my list, and answering/reading regional forum posts. Darn you derailing writing related activites! At the end of the workday, I had to run to our Sunday write-in venue to sign contracts and get a key, then it was off to the used book store to drop off donations from Kickoff...and then to the store to buy supplies for the write-in and donations for the venue. Family stuff ate up my night. Ending wordcount:7282

Day 6: The bank's underwriters took hours of my day with all their extraneous needed details. I did manage to stop and get extra chairs for the weekend write-in and then got them and all the stuff that had slowly filled the back of my car loaded into the big van that will be transporting everything to the write-in. Then there was lots of work, dinner, followed immediately with a meeting with our builder. Then family time. Oh hey, there was finally forty minutes for writing. Go! Word count: 8003

Day 7: Got a couple hundred words in in the morning, then it was off to prepare bidding sheets for our silent auction this weekend. And, of course, work, and email subcontractors for our house. Had dinner with the electric contractor and then managed to get some words in. Word Count 9332

Day 8: Wrote a bunch of words. Worked a lot. Got bad news about our builder from our bank. Swore a lot. Word count 11,328

Day 9: Met with new builder. Got the unmarked creeper van loaded for the write-in tomorrow. I sure hope I come home with a lot less stuff. That van is backed. And its a big cargo van! Wrote a lot of words in the hopes of eventually catching up. Word count:  13,681

Day 10: Big write in day! Woke up at 4am and started thinking about all of our house drama. To sum up: Because we're within 500 feet of a county drain, we were notified we have to file a bunch of extra paperwork and pay more money for permits. This lead to discovering that the majority of our land is actually wetland. Thankfully this is not the area we'd planned to build, but we still have to pay another fee and file a bunch more paperwork because where we intend to build is right next to the wetland. ARG.

Left at 9:30 am for the write-in got set up, wrote about 2k, ate lots, had fun, and cleaned up. Got done at 6pm and then spent the rest of the night with family.

Day 11: Weekly write-in night. Had a busy day, but managed to get words in at the write in. Ending word count: 18,010

Day 12: Work, running around with kids, and then a lovely evening migraine. Word Count: 18,328

Progress Report: NaNo 2013 - First Days

Due to a total fail on my part, progress is slower than I expected. Two fails, really.

Fail #1: Ambitious plan to submit a short for critique the week before NaNo, secure in the knowledge that my NaNo project was suitably prepared after locating my file titled: Into the Blue Notes. This plan would have been successful if not for the meddling new house project that ate up a ton of my time that I had planned to be revising the short after receiving critiques. Revisions didn't mostly wrap up until the afternoon of November 1. There's still the middle section that needs work, but I'm mulling over suggestions on that yet.

Fail #2:  That Notes file that I assumed contained the character and chapter information that I usually compile as I write...yeah, not so much. It contained the two articles I'd used for inspiration, but nothing else. *headdesk* So the rest of November 1 was spent compiling those necessary notes. I ended the first day with a big word count of 37.

Day two sat at 387 words for a long time due to the fact that I was still editing my way through the notes compellation part of the project. I added...I tooketh away. Evening saw a major rush of progress as one of my lovely wrimos, who was also lacking in words, challenged me to word wars until we were both on track

Day three brought our regional Kickoff Party. Lots of loading the card, driving, set up, hosting, posting pictures, counting donations and putting everything away, along with prepping next Sunday's supplies for the next event and then spending time with family to make up for being gone all afternoon, meant I didn't get much writing in. Ending word count 4117

2013 NaNo Project

November is fast approaching and I'm buried in work and house planning. In light these facts, I've decided to give myself a chance of getting to 50k by continuing a story I started months ago. Into the Blue was intended to be a novelette, but at 20K, I still had a lot of story to tell. Someday I'll master that novelette word limit. Just not today, or next month.

Into the Blue is the story of Dalmont Tibido, a sixteen year old boy who wakes from incubation in a deep space traveling ship to learn the AI has chosen him as the commander of their mission. Given that he has an entire crew of well-trained youth just like him eager to colonize the planet their ancestors have chosen for them, plenty of supplies and an AI to guide them in all things, what could go wrong?

Oh, pretty much everything.

Hence why 20K just wasn't near enough.

This is why I'm so happy that I made myself write notes about all those additional bad things I hadn't gotten to yet. It will make November just a little easier. Assuming I can make time to write, that is.

Getting Crafty: More Book Pages

NaNoWriMo is fast approaching and while I ready regional emails, event locations and details, and the pile of prizes I've stockpiled over the past year, a few more projects begged to be created. Who am I to say no? Okay, I probably should have said no rather than staying up late to make time to do them, but who needs sleep? Yeah, I know. I do. I also need to create something once in a while or I become a very unpleasant person, so I guess that's important too.

One night I made flowers from book pages. Henry the Eighth to be specific. The poor book had lost most of its binding. After doing a little origami, the first chapter makes a nice bouquet.

 

This project took a couple nights, but I ended up with three of them - sort of by accident. I was mindlessly making page cones when I realized that what I'd thought was enough to make a full flower wasn't. Well, not exactly. They were all the same size cones. It made for a nice stack-o-cones, but it didn't have the flower effect I was going for. Rather than throw them away, I made lots of the other sized cones I needed and ended up with three complete flowers.

 

It's hard to tell here, but they are fifteen inches across. It's a big flower! I only managed to burn myself once on my old malfuntioning glue gun. I new one might be in order soon.

In other news, a veggie picking expodition into my garden, yieled a black swallowtail caterpillar which is now happly muching carrot leaves in a vase on my kitchen windowsill. It's nearly doubled in size in the past three days. Very hungry caterpillar, indeed!

 

While clearing trees over at our property, my husband brought home a friend for my daugher. A brown snake. I am not a fan of snakes. At all. Yet, she was very excited about it and am I going to say no? Yes, except that it's a very small snake and it's now behind glass on my kitchen counter, where I can see it and know it's behind glass. Knowing is half the battle, right? 

 

I won't be holding the snake any time soon. Or ever. But I was nice and found worms for it. Worms don't bother me. A tad ironic, I know.

 

And so, with two new animal charges to watch over, it's time to ponder what I'm going to attempt to work on this November.

Stuff and Things

Life is still hectic, but I wanted to check in to prove I'm still alive--for my sake as much as yours. I'd hoped to have a good news post here, but that's taking a little longer than expected so I'll get to that another day.

Life in writing land looks like email submissions instead of characters and plots. That's not all bad, at least I feel like I'm doing something with what I did have time to write.

House plans are back from the designer and pricing has commenced. We met with a General Contractor who is willing to let us do a lot of the work so we can cut costs. It's now a matter of time for us to get the pricing package together as we can for him to finish up and then go to the bank for money. Clearing the land is progressing at a weekend at a time pace. My poison ivy has mostly cleared up. Yay, for that!

NaNoWriMo planning is in full swing, at least as far as my ML duties go. I don't know where I'm going to find time to write this November, especially if we're mid-house, but at least my local writers will have their regional events, weekly write-ins and lots of prizes.

Getting Crafty: Writer's Blocks

We all fall victim to the dreaded writer's block now and then.

I've seen many different ways to solve this problem, but why buy one of those cute little block or sets of dice when you can make one? As a bonus, you get to pick the words. And yeah, I like to throw in some fun words to get the wheels turning again. As another bonus, you can choose words that best fit your genre or let the blocks fall where they may.

All you need is a bag of wooden blocks from the craft store.

I used 3/4 inch.

A bottle of craft paint. I like black.

Words. I used an old dictionary that I'd be saving for crafty purposes.

A small bottle of Mod Podge

A brush for paint and one for the Mod Podge

It's all downhill from here. The gathering of supplies always seems to take the longest for me. That could have something to do with the amount of supplies I have to sort through... I'm overcoming my craft supply hoarding problem. I swear.

1. Paint your blocks

2. While the paint dries, find your words. You might have to choose words that fit on your blocks or adjust your font size so they do.

3. Use the Mod Podge to affix your words onto the blocks. Working one face at a time across however many blocks you're doing allows for some dry time. Be sure to keep a dry side down as you work or your pretty word will stick to your work surface and the block. It's not a good thing. Trust me.

4. If you like an aged look...you know to show that you combat writer's block a lot...or maybe just like to challenge yourself frequently. Yeah, that sounds better. Rub the corners and/or edges across a sheet of sandpaper.

5. Let everything dry.

6. Sort into sets. Six is a nice number. I used one bulk bag of blocks and made four sets of six. Yes, for those of your doing NaNoWriMo locally next year, you'll be seeing these.

7. Get writing!

 

Wondering how to use these things?

1. Consider writing a story or your next chapter.

2. Look at blinking cursor until your eyes dry out.

3. Remember you have help and toss the blocks on the table.

4. Use the words to construct your scene/chapter/plot.

 

Apparently my story is about a husband who is a lush hanging out too long in a restaurant in another town. This causes some sort of commotion (probably because he drunkenly tumbled into someone from this other town...the wrong someone), and now he's launched a year long battle. Way to go mystery guy. Way to go.

In the case of a scene or chapter, there's a distinct possibility that using all the words isn't going to happen, but the idea is to get your creative juices flowing again. Take inspiration where you can and get those fingers moving!

 

 



As NaNo winds down

Contrary to what you might believe from my blogging presence, I am still on the planet. It's just, well, NaNoWriMo.

I'm happy to report that I wrote my 50,000th word last night at 9:12pm. No, the story is not done. The story will very likely never be done. It's a mess. It's easily the worst thing I've written since I started to take writing seriously. However, it didn't suck so horribly bad that I couldn't bear working on it. It had some redeeming bits.

On the redeeming list:
• Characterization practice. Since I spent a good deal of this "novel" trying to find out just who the hell had an engaging pov to tell it through, I did a lot of showing of the scene and events through many different people.

• Writing through the "bad guy". Yes, I've done the antagonist pov many times, but this guy was a different experience. He saw the world at a very different angle than everyone else. He had a very disturbing (yet fun in a writer-sort of way) mind to get into.

• Description is awesome for adding word count. This is probably why I'm light on description in most of my other writing. I'm usually focused on keeping the word count low and only focusing on the important details rather than trying to build up lots of words. However, this was also a good place to see how people saw the same things very differently.

• I made time for writing again. This was my real goal so even though the writing generally sucks, I'm calling it a win.

What sucked so bad:
• I was so stressed with life that I couldn't remember my own character's names from day to day. I had to make a list - and when I forgot to add secondary people, well on the next day, they ended up with names like "guy 2" and "nurse 4".

• I repeated soooo much stuff because I couldn't find a character to tell the story through that spoke to me like they normally do. This was also likely due to life being stressful / not being able to relax and sink into the story.

• Inane. That should be the title of this "novel". While it had a few scenes I really enjoyed writing, most of it was in the "OMG just get through this so I can get to the next plot point" or "For the love of all that's holy someone do something" category. In short, the whole lack of focus thing on my part led to mind-numbing three page scenes where two characters ate crackers and then declared they were thirsty. Tired brain no make interesting thing happen. Gaaaah.

On the whole, I'm chalking it up to a month-long writing exercise. Which makes me a little sad because this is the first time I've not walked out of NaNo with a shiny new project I'm proud of.  I guess that's what the other eleven months of the year are for, huh?