All work and no writing makes writers twitchy

Apologies to my usual blog haunts. I have not had the freetime to hang out in my beloved internet. Blame work. I do.

While I love the ability to pay bills, the lack of writing time is really getting on my nerves. I pity the character who gets their wish to have me work on their story next. I have a good deal of pent up aggression to vent into words. People might get hurt. No, I'm kidding, they'll certainly get hurt. Hell, they'll probably get killed.

I could really use a good fight scene right now. In the mood I'm in, I wouldn't place bets on which side would win.

Mermaids might suddenly find the ocean dry pumped for a good scrubbing.

Samarah, you might find the middle is one bloody fight after another with no sex until the end, which as I recall, there wasn't much sex at the end. Your patience is hightly recommended.

Jackson, your story includes a lot of blood and gore. I don't think I could make that more depressing, bloody or gory than it already is, but hey, do you really want to challenge me on that?

Bruce, my dear knight, your story already doesn't end well for you, suffice it to say, the middle will likely not be any more pleasant. What with the excess body hair, the flock of godly sheep, and your empty-headed twit of a girlfriend...say what if she talked a lot, really loudly, until she drove you all into madness? I'm open to changing up the ending. What do you say?

Maribella, I'd recommend not making any demands right now. I'm much more in the mindset of your uncle at the moment.
You don't want me writing about babies right now, Marion. I guarantee it would be some deformed, demon-possessed creature dead set on bringing about the end of your world, and while it wouldn't provide much resolution, I'm inclined to let the baby win.

Which brings me to Vayen and the gang. Really? Do I need to even go there? You know what this mood is like first hand.

Deep cleansing breaths and all that. Ahem. Yeah.

I came home to a letter

I returned from my trip to Yellowstone late last night to find a note on my desk. In light of not having all my photos organized enough to post anything trip related, I figured I'd share the letter.

Dear She Who Taps the Keys,

We hope you are enjoying your time away from us. We stand here stunned. We don't have much choice, you see, because you left your laptop behind. You've left us for a long weekend, sure, but nine days? What were you thinking? What about all those great ideas you get when you're away from the computer? How are you supposed to apply them to our stories if you leave us behind?

Perhaps you don't fully understand our plights. Here, we'll lay them out for you so you can sit your butt on the couch, plug in your laptop and seriously consider making up for lost time.

Samarah would like to know what the hell happens in the middle of her story.

Jackson wonders what happened to his family (and the rest of the human race for that matter).

Bruce also wants to know what happens in the middle of Not Another Bard's Tale. What is it with you and skimping on middles anyway?

Maribella demands to know which young man (none of which she likes) she's going to marry. Her uncle suggests himself as he's quite content to run the kingdom. No really, he'd be happy to take that plot issue off your hands.

The mermaid is getting restless and is threatening to feed your toes to her new husband if you don't finish her story's revisions.

Marion is very depressed as you keep talking about fixing her story but never seem to get around to it. She may start stealing babies from other WIPs if you don't act soon.

Oh and Vayen and the gang are quite annoyed that you've set their third novel on the back burner. Are you sure it's wise to annoy them?

We hope you enjoyed your vacation. Don't plan on another any time in the near future.

Sincerely,
Your Characters

Percolator In Action

From my backyard: A cecropia moth visited our trampoline.

While I haven't had a change to write a darn thing lately, the time away from doing so has allowed my subconscious percolator to do its thing. Three things I've accomplished this week without physically accomplishing anything (writing related):

1. At long last, I've happened upon a title for the sequel to Trust. Now called: Chains of Gray. That only took several years...

2. I've discovered that I seem fond of two themes throughout several of my stories--which are otherwise unrelated. One is the color gray (or grey, as I prefer to see it) having some significance in various ways. The other is genetics - either the manipulation of, breaking down of or restrictions based upon them. It started with Trust, then went in another direction in A Broken Race and splintered into Devolution. Now its continuing on in the as yet untitled (Egads, yet another project to title. Let's hope that doesn't take years, shall we?) prequel to A Broken Race. Neither thing was intentional in its multiple manifestations. Giving the percolator time to wander through my stories while my body was busy allowed it to make these connections and point them out to me. At which point I profoundly said, "Huh. Weird."

3. I've had time to work on troubleshooting the aforementioned Devolution. That short story has been languishing in my 'rework' folder for well over a year. I've got the conflict down its just finding the right *bang* for the resolution that totally escapes me as of yet. It's not a twist kind of story and that might be what's tripping me up. At least this gives the percolator something to chew on while the rest of me is off in worker drone mode.

Have you noticed any unintentional repeating of things in your stories?

Dragon myself through the week

From this side it looks angry.

It's been a crazy busy week. You'd think being down one kid (he's working at Boy Scout camp for two weeks) would make for a little extra time, but no. Work has continued to devour what would usually be my writing time. Which also is my critiquing time, so sadly, I've also fallen woefully behind there too. On the slightly brighter side, I have been able to devote some subconscious effort to percolating submission pieces for A Broken Race, which is nearly ready to head out into Queryland.

While I've been so busy, I have managed to carve out a little craft time with my daughter. She's been in a 'let's make dragons out of clay' mode lately. Who am I to argue? So I sat down with her and a ball of air dry clay and we made dragons.

At this angle its more friendly.

Admittedly, I made this dragon over a month ago (work has been at crazy level for quite awhile). I then moved it to the corner of my kitchen counter where stuff that sits around collects. I figured that if it sat there, I'd remember to make time to also sit with my daughter and paint it. Great intention.

It sat there for a week and got hit with some random something that I set on the counter. One wing, a foot and several back spines fell off. I swore. Profusely. Then I got my glue gun out and fixed it.

I moved my repaired and still unpainted dragon to my desk in an 'out of the way' place so it would be safe until I got around to painting it. While it was in this safe place, it seems that I managed to smash it with a tape gun in a flurry of shipping packages for work. All that stuff that broke before, fell off again. Only this time, the wing shattered. Again, I swore profusely. I didn't fix it.

The poor dragon and its broken bits sat in a pile of clay dust for several weeks. You might say it was daring me to fix it and I was ignoring it because I was still pissed that I'd broken it again before I had made time to paint the darn thing.

Finally, after a late dinner, I hauled out my box of paints and my glue gun. The dragon got fixed. Again. It also got a base coat. Then it sat on the table for two days until I stepped away from another twelve hour day and a late dinner to begin the brain numbing process of painting scales. Four days later, its finally done.

The dragon has now been placed in an actual safe place. And if fate has it's way with the dragon again, at least I have these photos.

May Writing Challenge: Week 4

Before we get to the weekly update of shame, I'd like to take a moment to thank Ian over at Views From The Bald Patch for the Kreativ Blogger award. The discarded gang thanks you too (and Blue promises not to eat you).

According to the Kreativ Blogger rules, I need to:

1. Thank the blogger who nominated me for the award, and provide a link back to their blog.

2. List 7 things about myself that the readers might find interesting.

3. Tag 7 other bloggers, providing links to their blogs, and letting them know.

Seven things about me that you may find interesting:

1. My favorite flower is the Iris. They smell soooo good. Here are some of my favorites from my yard.

2. I got married in my garage. On Halloween. Our big costume party reception (also in the garage with a huge tent attached) was a riot. As a bonus, one forgets our anniversary.

3. My favorite hair color is blue. The problem is that it stains everything that it touches so I've not been blue for a while now. There's just to much cleaning involved after the dyeing takes place.

4. I can't watch other people brush their teeth. No sir. It grosses me out to no end. When there are teeth brushing scenes in movies or on tv, I'll look away until it's over. Like people who get all squeamish shots or gore, that's me with foaming toothpaste.

5. As a kid, I grew up processing deer. Hey, I live in Michigan. Deer season is holy around here. Not being a hunter, I took care of the other end - the skinning, sawing, cutting, grinding. I spent most of my elementary through high school years hoping that I'd washed all the blood off my hands and arms before I went to school. In fourth grade, I took a brain to school in a cool whip container for show and tell. No one would touch it. Wusses.

6. I have OCD-like issues with necklace clasps and tags. It gets worse when I'm drinking because that cancels out my introverted tendencies and propels me across the bar to fix any stranger's offending tag or clasp I spot. Not fixing it and knowing it's there makes me so damn uncomfortable and distracted that its just easier to go take care of it. However, after my friends caught on to my 'I'm just going to go talk to that person over there for a minute' issue, they started flipping their tags out and wearing their necklaces backwards just to bug me. Since then, I've gotten better about controlling my urges-mostly just to spite them.

7. My favorite color is grey. It used to be black but as I grew older, my favoritism faded. As a side note, spelling it gray drives me nuts. Yes, I know that's the proper way to spell it in the US, but I work with color all day and in everything I do, it's spelled grey, so darn it, that's how I spell it. Don't correct me.

Rather than specifically tagging people, I offer up a free invitation to my regular blog readers. Consider yourself tagged. No go forth and share seven interesting bits about yourself!

And now, onto the topic of shame:
A Story A Day In May update:


May 21: Didn't get any writing of note done at all.

May 22: Wavered on quitting this crazy challenge all together and worked on finishing up the first round of edits on A Broken Race. Damn that feels good to have it all sitting pretty on its second draft.

May 23: Ripped the lid off the percolator and pulled out a story idea from last week. Wrote and finished: Found - a 2,800 word short story about a little boy and hiding.

As much as I'm not fulfilling this challenge very well, I do love the feeling of writing a complete story and calling it done in a day--not counting percolating time, of course. At least I'm coming out of it with more written than I otherwise would have made time for during this insanely busy month.

May 27: Oh hey, surprise, thanks to working long hours, I haven't written anything in days. Unless an awesome idea hits me, I'm now going to devote my scattered energy and precious few minutes of writing time toward preparing for Camp NaNo which begins in four days.

Weaving a novel

My favorite part of editing came upon me yesterday. That moment in working on a novel that the light bulb stops flickering and stays lit. The point where my percolater goes *bing* and the questions I've been pondering are suddenly answered. I want nothing more than to curl up with my laptop and connect all the dots that I've just seen before I forget the knowledge my subconscious has just bestowed upon me.

For me, writing a novel is much like weaving fabric. I start with thread. Some of it is pretty crappy quality but I weave it in anyway because I don't have enough of the good stuff to make the design I see in my head. The thread knots. It breaks a few times, so I tie it back together. Occasionally I even use the wrong color. Hey, I never said my rough drafts were pretty to look at.

Once the fabric is done, I take it off the loom and watch in horror as one side pulls all crooked because I wove that section too tight and another section has huge gaps because I wove it too loosely. I spend weeks pulling out the crappy thread, inserting good thread, and adjusting the weave until it looks uniform. But when I show my cloth to other people, they point at the knots and the spots where the pattern doesn't quite line up. I spend a few more weeks fixing everything until surely it must be just right.

And somewhere in there it hits me--the point where I see that the pattern is much more intricate than I'd first thought. And I know just what to add to create it! Who knows, I might even add a few sequins for a little sparkle. (In this case, they were black sequins--the sparkle was quite dark.)

I've still got a little embellishing to do, but I'm liking what I see. What does your moment when all the threads fall into place feel like?

Playing along with Lucky 7

No, I wasn't tagged, but I was intrigued. And really, what better way to tune out not one, but two mother freaking robins now pelting my window, than by scrolling through my WIP to see if it passes the Lucky 7 test?

Bird lover disclaimer: These birds have covered my deck railing in bird poo because they sit there all day between attacking my window and sitting in the tree ten feet away when I bang on the window. I put big white clings on the outside of my window. I put a huge freaking hawk cling on my window. I even taped a 3ft by 4ft piece of paper to the outside of my window (which blocks a lot of my needed natural lighting, I'll have you know) and still, the stupid robins are hurling themselves at the very edges, were a one inch strip of window is still there. (Hey, I need some sunlight, all right?) What the hell, you stupid, poopy robins? What the hell?

So this Lucky 7 thing is to see if your WIP holds up to the 'is this interesting all the way through test'. Something should be happening on every page. The rules to the Lucky Seven are as follows:
*Open the document for your current MS/WIP
*Go to page 7 or to page 77
*Go to line 7
*Copy the next 7 lines (sentences or paragraphs) and post them exactly as they are written. No changing or cheating!

Here is the designated excerpt:

He felt her neck. Dead. A perfectly good breeder, dead. Dread took hold of him. “Did Jack kill her or you? What happened here?”

The Simple backed away. He shook his head, but didn’t utter a word.


Nothing better than a body to spice things up! If you feel like playing along, consider yourself tagged.

Banging your head on the window

As I type there is a Robin banging itself against my picture window. Repeatedly. I rather feel like this Robin.

I spent the majority of my Easter plunking away at chapter twelve of A Broken Race. Yes, it was fully written and all, but I didn't like it. It had repeated information and seemed to be missing some vital connection points between Chapter nine and fourteen. So I added them in. Ta Da! All fixed!

Oh hell. The previously 3,500 word chapter is now 7,000 words?!? *insert Robin body slamming the window*

And there's no tension at all? *more Robin*

But we need the connection bits or the story gets lost between point A and B. Sigh. *insert sleeping on it*

All my pretty pastel Easter words are getting flushed. I just spent the last two hours of my morning reworking the first half of the chapter to add some tension and severely reduce the word count. Thank you Robin, for understanding my frustration. Oh, and it's your reflection, you idiot! Quit doing that!


I'm off to hang something on the window and contemplate the second half of chapter twelve. I hope your day is less frustrating than mine and Robin's.

Fools, Writing and Eggs

Being April first I feel like I should have come up with some fantastical fib to attempt to fool everyone with, but I decided to spent my creative energies elsewhere. Instead I've spent yesterday and today catching up on edits for the previous three chapters of A Broken Race. Yeah, probably time better spent, but a fib would have been fun too.

Only five more chapters to run through the critique mill before A Broken Race gets fully spit back into my hands. So far so good with only a few minor noted hiccups. I know, I've just cursed myself, but I am truly happy with the feedback so far - especially from those who have caught some staging slip ups on my part.

In other creative news, it seems my Easter egg project post has been selected as a finalist in the Easter Craft Challenge hosted by Happy Hour Projects and Here Comes the Sun. I feel I've already won by having this project done weeks ahead of time (rather than next Saturday when I would have realized I didn't even have the Easter decor out yet.) So thank you to the lovely hosts of this challenge for getting me thinking about Easter much earlier (on time) this year. If you'd like to stop by and check out all the finalists and cast your votes, here's the link.

Time to get motivated

Ever feel like flinging your uncooperative character across the room? Well now you can! Want to stomp on their stupidity? Literally crush their limbs...err...whims? Yep, you can do that too.

Made from gloves, which I'll toss out the trendy term 'upcycled' to pretend I'm up on the lingo, these little guys (No, I didn't use that extra finger to make them gender specific) are ready and waiting for your abuse (a.k.a. motivation). They are posable and padded for to protect your knuckles.

I'll use one of my current characters as an example.

"Hey 152, can I talk to you a minute?"

"Okay."

"So in that last chapter, I thought I had issues with William slowing the pace down with all his tidbits of history."

"The Williams are bad."

"Yes, yes, we know that. But it turns out William wasn't my problem. It was you!"

"Me? What did I do?"

"It seems your killing people, even by accident is making you difficult to sympathize with. You're going to have to cut that out."

"But, it's not my fault. It's what I do. I don't want to change!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Okay! Okay! Rewrite me! I'll change! I promise!"

Yep. They work. And I feel better too. Win win!

Character motivators, coming to a OCGR Nano raffle near you. Or me. Yeah, mostly near me. Sorry.

Victims of the Knife: The New Guy

From the shadows under my desk comes a concentration-busting drone of sobs. I turn away from edits on A Broken Race and search for the culprit.

I discover a blubbering blue mass of tentacles. Ms. Wildstar sits beside it, patting one of the long, thick appendages. She glares at me. "What did you do to him?"

"I wrote him a nice letter."

"You call that nice? You dumped him."

"I dumped him nicely. I have other projects to work on and his wasn't going anywhere. Remember my resolution of LESS? This falls under cutting losses so I can devote my story-fixing peroclating time to stories that have a hope of getting published."

"But you hoped his story would get published. Why would you up on him?"

"He was created for a specific prompt. When he was rejected, I changed him for a wider market. He never quite flowed right after that. We covered this in the letter." I turn back to my laptop and the more promising story waiting for me.

A tugging on my leg proves just as distracting as the sobs had been. "What now?"

Drooping eye stalks atop a climbing mass of blue tentacles make their way up my leg. His prolific tears soak into my pants.

I sigh. "Since you're intent on not going away, I suppose you want to meet everyone?"

He bobs his eye stalks.

"Everyone, this is Blue. He's an alien. He's blue. Thanks to being horribly misled by our government, he's now very paranoid and will not be taking any vacations in the desert. He enjoys filing thorough reports, good food, females and the familiar comforts of his spaceship. And apparently most things beginning with the letter F. His dislikes are people that won't listen to him when he tells them their world is about to be destroyed, his boss, probes of any sort, and misinformation."

Blue raises a tentative tentacle and waves it. A shrill female voice says, "Hello." Blue turns a shade bluer and bangs on his translator. A booming male voice says, "Hello. That's better. Worthless piece of malfunctioning crap. I look forward to meeting all of you."

"Happy now?" I ask him.

"For the moment. Got anyone around here that can fix translators?"

Ms. Wildstar beckons to him. "Let her get back to work before she axes someone else out of spite. I'll show you around."

I let the two of them be and settle back into editing in silence.

Some Cyborg Weasel Fun

Immersed in editing mode as I am while A Broken Race works its way through its first round of critiquing, I've been staying busy with other little creative projects to get my 'make something new' fix. Sewing has been fun, but since spend most of my workday in front of a computer, sometimes its easier to sneak in some creative moments there.

So last night, I retired my two year old cyborg weasel cling and borged this little guy. Now he's armed and ready to stalk me during all those times I'm wandering around on the internet rather than writing.

I'd attempt to take some better close up pics of all the little details but the darn glossy finish made it very difficult to get even this pic to turn out half decent. Who came up with the idea of a glossy finish on a laptop anyway? Windex and paper towel manufacturers had to be in on it.

Thanks to Ian, I just had the realization that I have the file for this. Duh. How about I just crop some bits of it for close ups? *smacks forehead*

Six Sentence Sunday: A Broken Race 3

Time to hop back on the SSS train. This week we meet the Matron and William. William is pretty ticked that I picked one of his less than shining moments to share with you, but he'll have to get over it.

In this scene the Matron isn't happy with the fact that a Jack has managed to break into the women's room and harass her charges.

“You take care of this, William, or we’ll all be sorry. You hear me?”

He put on his most placating smile. “I will.” 
“Oh save it, you impotent ball of fat. This is about reviving humanity, not about getting me to stop nagging you." 

Check out all the other Six Sentence Sunday excerpts here.

Six Sentence Sunday: A Broken Race 2

In this week's excerpt we meet One-fifty-two, one of the Simples. When I started this story, I never intended to have him become the foremost MC of the four, but with his emotional vulnerability and unique pov, he quickly became my favorite to write.

He’d had a name. A name of his own before he’d become One-fifty-two. He looked at the numbers stamped on his hand. They’d hurt when William had put them there with a needle and ink. But it was part of being a man, of growing up. He’d cried, but not too loud. No one had wiped away his tears.

Check out all the other Six Sentence Sunday excerpts here.

Six Sentence Sunday: A Broken Race

Today's excerpt is from the opening of a project from a few years ago that I'm finally getting cleaned up and ready for the big world. This is a conversation between Jack, one of the MCs and a man he's just captured during an attempted raid on his fortress. It neatly sums up what what the story is about.

Gunfire again filled the air.

The Wildman shook his head, tears running down his face. “Please, we just want a woman or two. You have so many.”

There weren’t many, barely enough to produce a steady population in fact, and far too many of them Simples. “Your women are not my concern. Your kind is full of the disease and fifth that got us into this mess to begin with.”

Check out all the other Six Sentence Sunday excerpts here

Racing through revisions

Wow, so when I said I thought revising A Broken Race would go quickly, I was right! It's done. Granted, that's about all I've been doing for the past few days, but I've really enjoyed getting back into these characters and the story again. Having only spent 30 days with them before, and that, a couple years ago, I was surprised at how much depth of character I'd crammed into 50k. Darn it, I even made myself a little teary a few times.

Since I've been plowing through NaNo rough drafts, I thought I'd share a few faults I keep finding.

• I do not use contractions. There must be some subconscious 'it counts as two words instead of one that way' thing going on.

• I repeat myself. I rephrase what I've just written, sometimes right after saying it. I get stuck on a particular thought and go at it until I've achieved total anvil status. Sometimes I rephrase a thought several sentences later. It makes for some confusing clean up work. I had to go back again and again to keep those spots straight and it got confusing. Hold on, didn't I just say that?

• I change people's names. In this year's NaNo novel, Nervo became Neko. In A Broken Race, Miranda became Emelda, and Violet who was dead twenty years suddenly was reborn. Oops! I do make notes as I'm writing, but its the secondary characters that sometimes miss out on being included in my orderly efforts.

• Consistancy. There's twelve women. Yet, there are more like forty of them. It was morning, now its suddenly night. When did that character get clothes on? He's only wounded a little. No wait, he's almost dead!

For you fellow CC folks, A Broken Race will be going up for critique very soon. Please feel free to tear into it as I know you love to do.

Onward into a new old writing project

With Trust and it's sequel finally off my writing plate, I'm finally able to give some of my other novels in progress some attention. Yes, I know, that's a lot of finally, but that's how it feels.

After waiting patiently for its turn, fantasy short: Children of the Leaves got a turn in the revision chair. It's up for critique in early next month. I can't believe it's been almost a year since I had a chance to submit anything to CC. And that last thing? It was the first version of Children of the Leaves. It's like I've been stuck in my writing cave or something.

Next up is A Broken Race, a dysotopian novella that was NaNo 09. I haven't touched it since I hit my 50k. The wonderful thing about this project is that it's the first NaNo I actually wrote from beginning to end. There are no sudden blank spots of doom. I set out to write a novella and I did! There are some troubled areas, namely the ending, but for the most part, I'm thinking this shouldn't be a massive undertaking to get it from rough to first draft status. Famous last words right?

So what's this new story about?

In fortress ruled by impotent men and protected by testosterone-ridden powerhouses, One-fifty-two is one of many, a simple man, a worker. But he's not quite as simple as the others thought, and when he sneaks into the the vault where the precious few healthy women are kept, he discovers the nasty secret the breeding masters have been hiding. And it's been hiding in the garden where his food is grown, no less. Emboldened by his new knowledge, One-fifty-two takes back his childhood name, Joshua, and vows to set the women free.