Monthly Archives: November 2015

Note to self

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Randomness

≈ 6 Comments

Note to self: Don’t read fiction before breakfast.

I got almost no writing done yesterday. Eked out maybe 200 words. At the time, I felt like I was stuck because I had no idea what came next in the story. Couldn’t picture it. Couldn’t find it. Just… total dead end.

Then this morning, when I was walking the dog, bits and pieces started to come back to me. I caught a line, which turned into a thread, and I started seeing where it was going again.

When I got back home, though, I picked up the book I was reading and … swoosh, away it all went again. It’s going to come back because I’m going to stare at the open Word file until it does, but ugh, it’s annoying.

I love fiction for the escape, but I think I’m probably better off not reading while I’m writing. I need my escape to be into my world, not someone else’s.

Story with a capital S

10 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Grace, NaNo, Reviews

≈ 4 Comments

Checking my email first thing this morning and Amazon had sent me a link to a new Sharon Shinn book. Argh! She used to be an auto-buy for me, but I was not so fond of her last few books. This one was $13.99 for the Kindle version. I promptly checked the library but they didn’t have it, nor any sign that they would have it (based on the fact that they didn’t have the two previous books in the series). Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma… but I couldn’t resist. Mostly because I still had money on an Amazon giftcard so it was spending money that couldn’t be used for groceries or the electric bill anyway. My day is therefore starting about four hours later than it should, because I spent them pleasantly reading Jeweled Fire.

And pleasant reading it was. Also, from an aspiring writer perspective, it was interesting to analyze. If it had been written by an author unknown to me, nothing about it would have put the author onto my auto-buy list or my permanent keeper shelf. I probably wouldn’t even remember the author’s name. That happens a lot with authors — the first few books are really good and then they become, well, pleasant. The stakes are no longer high. The characters are harder to invest in. But it’s not just that the ending is guaranteed to be happy — I prefer happy endings so most of the books that I read are going to end well. It’s also that nothing along the way is going to be too unpleasant. But that should be okay, too. I like pleasant books.

But it made me realize that the books I like best are the ones where the characters are having an intense inner journey, a passionate emotional experience, regardless of the actual events of the story. Not a lot of action is not a problem for me as long as the character despairs, at least for a moment or two. This book — which, again, was a perfectly nice book — has a character who’s having a story. Scared, trapped, in love with the wrong man, her mother and sister murdered, driven to the verge of suicide, saved at the last minute, slowly making friends with strangers who may be safer for her than her family… seriously, she’s got a Story.

Unfortunately, she’s not the protagonist. The protagonist, on the other hand, is the kind of character who — pretty much the moment she realizes she has no money — receives a shipment of coins and clothes from the family she ran away from. Problem solved. She’s occasionally in danger, but she’s never remotely at risk. And sure, she’s discovering she’s in love with maybe the wrong guy, but there’s nothing much keeping them apart and he probably sorta loves her, too. Also, he’s a nice guy who any sensible person would be in love with. Pleasant, nice, readable, mildly entertaining. Not a keeper if storage is tight (although yay for ebooks, and certainly a keeper for my Kindle library.) Definitely not an auto-buy, despite the $14 spent.

There’s a scene in Grace that I haven’t been sure about. I keep circling around it. It might change my world-building somewhat. It might be out of place. It might not fit the kind of story I think I’m writing. But I think I’m going to write it anyway, because emotional intensity is interesting to read, and when it comes right down to it, I think I’d rather write interesting than pleasant. (Although I like amusing as well.)

I wonder if I will ever finish writing this book?

Yesterday’s word count was something like 1800 words — not quite the 2K I’d like to be making every day, but enough to break the 10K mark. And now it’s almost 11 and I haven’t even started my real writing yet, so it’s time to get to it!

09 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in NaNo, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

I’ve been having bizarrely vivid dreams lately. Last night’s had me trying to make peppermint tea, needing to share it with someone else, finally making it in a plastic bag that unexpectedly contained sand and salt, so that my tea tasted like ocean water in the end, not at all drinkable. I suspect it was my subconscious revealing my feelings about the book I’m writing. It feels like the ocean, too big, too salty, too sandy — but you know, if you weren’t expecting peppermint tea, the ocean is great. Not for drinking, but certainly for appreciating. Trying to make the ocean in a plastic bag, though, is not so easy. When I woke up this morning, the dream was so real to me that I had a moment of thinking I needed to go find the bag and clean up the mess I’d made.

Yesterday — not a good writing day. Maybe I set myself up for such by talking dust bunnies so early in the morning, but I wound up with a day where I did get lots of stuff done — clean kitchen, two loads of laundry, vacuuming, clean sheets on the bed — but not lots of writing done. Still, two or three months ago, I would have been perfectly happy with a day that included 400+ words, not wincing at the lack thereof, so I’m not going to be too hard on myself. But I am going to dive right into the story this morning. What I was writing yesterday wound up distracting me with worries about cultural insensitivity and lack of knowledge, so today I’m going to try to resolve those issues with some research and move on. The true NaNo-inspired writer would just move on and worry about the research on a second draft, but I’m just not that good at NaNo. Still, with any luck, I’ll hit the 10K milestone today — admittedly, a milestone that I should have reached several days ago — and that will be gratifying. Yay for milestones!

Not the writing day of my dreams

08 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Boring, Grace, NaNo

≈ 4 Comments

Yesterday’s writing flailed.

Well, I guess I flailed. The writing, it more sputtered and trickled and crept.

Until about 1 AM, I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. It’s that Noah is getting hit with all sorts of revelations that would be mind-blowing and I need to discover what he’s like when his mind is getting blown. Poor Noah’s been a bit of a volatile character — what’s he like when he doesn’t think he’s going crazy? The fact that I’m not quite sure seriously stalled my writing. Word count made it to 766, I think, but didn’t come anywhere close to the 2K I was hoping for.

I did, however, swim and enjoy the sunshine, so hey, that’s something. I know I keep writing this, but November 7th is definitely the latest I have ever been pleasantly swimming. This is a very weird weather year. Whenever someone comments on it around here, it’s with a wish for winter to get here, but I’m still enjoying summer, so I don’t mind.

In other news… nope, I got nothing. Yesterday was a quiet, frustrating day. I’m expecting today to be equally quiet, hopefully less frustrating. My goal for today is words, of course, but I’m also going to try to be productive around the house — clean sheets, laundry, vacuuming — so at least if I get to the end of the day and my word count is abysmal, I’ll be able to look around and see that I accomplished something. Eliminating dust bunnies is not nearly as satisfying as spawning plot bunnies, but it’s better than nothing!

Zombie dinosaurs and em dashes

07 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Boring, NaNo, Randomness

≈ 6 Comments

Blogging every day is made much easier by doing NaNoWriMo because I always have a topic on my mind: word count and whether I made it or not. I didn’t make it yesterday. Drat! But it was a busy day and I was out of the house a lot. I hit 1200 words in the morning, which was great, but when I got back to the house and tried to settle in to writing, I couldn’t kick my brain into gear again. I decided I’d write in the evening, but instead I went to sleep at 9. Nine! I wish that meant I was back on a normal sleep pattern, but instead I was awake at 3. I finally fell back asleep around 4:30.

The most annoying thing about that was that if I’d been awake at 4:30, I could have gone outside to see Venus, Mars and the moon line up, with Jupiter in the same vicinity. I did go out at 3:30 or so, when I remembered, but it was too early. The moon was nowhere to be seen. The night sky was lovely, though, and there was a little bit of fog in the air, which made it feel spooky beautiful.

It was strange being outside so early, though. I’d been woken up by a nightmare, which was some sort of mix of Jurassic Park with the zombie apocalypse — zombie dinosaurs in a kitchen, maybe? — featuring the Vlog Brothers being mildly heroic and rescuing trapped children. I wasn’t young enough to be rescued by them so I was going to have to find my own way off the island. I woke up as I was trying to decide whether to open the walk-in freezer that might or might not have a zombie raptor trapped inside. Not a particularly fun dream, although it sounds a lot more fun in retrospect than it was while I was in it. But I didn’t stay outside in the spooky beautiful night, because hey, zombie dinosaurs. My grill made a noise — probably a mouse living inside it — and I scurried inside and locked the door behind me.

Even though I didn’t hit my word count yesterday, I had a lot of fun writing. For the first time, possibly ever, I really got into the NaNo spirit. No tinkering, no tweaking, no polishing, just one word after the next. Well, all right, that’s not quite true, but minimal polishing. In particular, I let the em dashes fly. I normally try to be careful about how I use em dashes. My instinct is to use them all the time, everywhere, but I pull myself back and try to limit them to one phrase set off in em dashes at most every several hundred words. Yesterday, it was em dashes, em dashes, and more em dashes.

Today is going to be the same, I hope. I’m still in the scene that I thought would be fun to write, and it was, so that’ll be a good starting place for today. I’m in a little bit of the murky middle at the moment, though — I know this scene, but after I finish it, I’m kind of vague on what happens next. It means I’ll probably slow down a bit. Given that I’m slow already, compared to the NaNo pace, that’s probably not good news. But that’s okay. If it weren’t NaNo, I’d be pleased with my daily word count this week, so I’m going to do my best to break my goal of 2K, but otherwise not stress about it.

Last night’s dinner: ham and a baked sweet potato. I bought these white sweet potatoes from Trader Joe’s and I’ve eaten them mashed a couple of times, which was pretty good, but yesterday was the first time I baked one. Much, much better. If it weren’t Saturday, I’d be headed back to TJ’s today to pick up some more, but the parking there is a nightmare on Saturday, so I’ll try to make it sometime next week. But it was so good that I ate every single bit, including the skin, leaving none for poor Bartleby, who adores sweet potato. Fortunately, he whimpered at me which alleviated my guilt, since one of my basic rules of parenting/dog parenting is that whiners should never be rewarded for whining.

The ham was from CostCo, purchased because it looked like an absolute bargain of a protein: I chopped it up and put it into the freezer in packages with enough for maybe three or four meals for me, and I’d guess I will be eating it for months. I’m sure it’ll average out to less than $1/meal. (With no carbs in my diet, I need plenty of protein.) Unfortunately, I realized belatedly, after I got it home and started chopping it up, that it was cured with nitrates which I’m not supposed to eat. At the moment, I can’t possibly tell if I’m reacting to nitrates — way too many other things that I’ve eaten that I’m not supposed to — but I’m hoping that once I get back on track, it doesn’t turn out to be a trigger food. I’d be very sad to have my freezer filled with protein that I shouldn’t eat.

Good luck with words today, fellow writers! I hope we all catch the current.

Time change

06 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Bartleby, NaNo, Zelda

≈ 2 Comments

I used to hate the time change when R was little. It took us so long to get back on track, to get our schedules returned to something sensible, for him to not be over-tired at bedtime and awake too early in the morning. Now I’m really appreciating it. All last week I had to keep negotiating with the dog, who somehow has a really phenomenal internal clock.

I would point out the sky to her and say, “Look, it’s too dark to go for a walk now. I cannot see to clean up after you when it’s this dark outside. We have to wait until it’s light or be bad neighbors.”

And she would put her paw on me, and look at me earnestly with her deep brown eyes and try to transmit the thought, “What’s wrong with you, my beloved person? Do you not see that it is 7AM and time for us to be out sniffing other people’s garbage?”

Now it’s light at 6:30 and she’s still comfortably asleep when it’s dark. The fact that I can’t get used to the time change and am waking at up 5-something every day is but a minor burden. Although seriously annoying as I lie in bed telling myself that I should be asleep. There should be some good riddles about sleep, being one of those things that you aren’t aware of when you have but miss desperately when you don’t.

Anyway, yesterday’s word count was a lot higher than the NaNoWriMo site thinks it was, because the way they do word count is really annoying. You can’t easily post your words for the day — it always wants to know your total, as if you’re guaranteed to be working in one big file. I don’t work that way. I keep lots of separate little files. But it makes it seriously inconvenient to try to track my word count on their site if I want to count all the words I write and not just the ones that I keep. I bit the bullet yesterday and changed my total to not include the words I deleted, so it thinks I wrote something like not quite 1300 words, but I am pretty sure I wrote more like 3200. In other words, a really good word count day, even if that’s not obvious to the NaNoWriMo site.

A fairly terrible diet day, however, and oh, I am paying for that today. I don’t know why my brain, appetite, and body can’t work together to make healthier choices for me, but yesterday was not a day of healthy choices and today is a day when everything hurts. Shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, and on down. Ha, which I suppose is not everything, but simply every joint. I shall endeavor to be grateful for all the spaces between the joints that don’t hurt. I suspect it won’t be easy, but it’s worth a try.

Lots of plans for today and, happily for me, a pretty clear chapter destination. I feel like the section that I’m working on will be fun, interesting, and take a fair number of words, so yay, words galore. As far as the NaNo site goes, I’m already 4000 words behind so not much chance that I’ll catch up today. I’ve never had a 4K word day in my life and today has too much going on, so it’s not going to be the first time. But I am going to aim for 2K and maybe I’ll make it.

First things first, though — it’s 6:52 and the dog is stirring. A nice brisk walk to get the creative juices flowing… well, no, that’s not usually how it happens. First a slow saunter around the block, watching as B leisurely sniffs every corner of grass and waddles along. Then a nice brisk trudge with Z.

Random side note: “pick and choose” is the weirdest phrase. We’ve apparently been using it since the 1400s but how does it make any sense at all? Once you’ve picked, haven’t you by definition chosen? I wonder if it came from harvesting, like first you pick all the apples, then you choose the ones you want? But it’s redundant in modern English and yes, I wrote it yesterday, then had to waste precious writing minutes pondering it and questioning whether it made any sense at all and why I had it in my head and then looking it up to figure it out. Bad me. But I’m going to try to eliminate it from the default word choice list in my brain, because it makes no sense.

And now, really, truly, time to walk the dogs. Goal for today: words! May all your November writing goal writing flow beautifully today. 🙂

Word counts

05 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in Randomness

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If I count blog posts, book reviews, a thing I wrote to a friend, AND story words, I easily broke 2000 words yesterday. If I just count story words, it was more like 200. Eep.

But I had a ridiculously nice day and that counts for something, too. I had a very productive morning, a great yoga class, bought veggies at the farmer’s market, went grocery shopping, made chicken soup, read a JD Robb, had a lovely time swimming and playing with the dogs — with the thought that it was only going to be sunny for twenty minutes so I HAD to take advantage even though I needed to write, but then when it stayed sunny, I stayed swimming… Yeah. It was a little summer vacation day in November. And bad me that I didn’t get much story writing done, but good me that I took the opportunity to savor the moment.

Of course, if I don’t stop savoring moments, I’m going to wind up broke and homeless and hungry and it will be hard to savor that, but I’m not going to bother with regrets or worry today. Not when I could be spending my time more productively.

I think there was more I was going to write about — maybe my indecision about posting book reviews to Goodreads? I’m going through a little internal debate about whether I want to keep my book reviews with my blog and/or create a book review blog, because I’m not sure I want them to be as public as they are on Goodreads. Not that a blog’s not public, but I write my book reviews mostly so I can remember what I thought about a book and so that I can keep track of my reading, not because I think they’re useful for other people. But as I discovered last year, in the year of many blogs, it’s sort of a pain to have a lot of blogs — I wind up not writing anywhere and getting topics mixed up and feeling like it’s more effort than it’s worth. I think I use Goodreads mostly because it’s so easy to find the book name and information. In other words, because I’m lazy. Anyway, I’ve got a mental debate going on with that. Oh, yeah, and some people think authors aren’t supposed to write book reviews, which is sort of a problem, too. Or at least it adds to the mental debate.

Regardless, yesterday I wrote three or four book reviews on Goodreads, instead of working on my own story, which was probably not the best use of my time, but I wanted to remember that I’d read those books and yes, I would have forgotten. It put my total of books read and recorded on Goodreads over 100 for the year, which I found somehow oddly gratifying. It reminded me of 6th grade, when we got popcorn parties when the class as a whole read 500 books, which was the only time in my childhood when my peers seemed to approve of my reading. I won’t give myself a popcorn party, though, since popcorn is definitely not on my approved foods list.

I got the feedback from the sessions I did at FWA yesterday. Despite the number of presentations I’ve given in my life, it was the first time I’ve gotten feedback from the official feedback type forms, which was kind of cool. Ahead of time, I suspected that feedback would be a lot like reviews — you can’t please all the people all the time, your mileage may vary, take them with a grain of salt, etc. But I was surprised at how touched I was by the nice comments. I think it was because I was using my real name. They just felt much more personal then reviews do. It made me think that I’d like to publish a book under my real name someday, but then I realized that meaner comments would also feel more personal so maybe not.

And somehow I have wasted far more time than I intended to thinking about Goodreads and FWA evaluations so its time to move on. Today’s goal: words, words, words, of course. But this time, story words, I hope!

NaJoMo

04 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Randomness

≈ 2 Comments

This month, in addition to being National Novel Writing Month, is also National Journal Writing Month, which I didn’t know until Carol mentioned it in the comments. And actually, when I went to look it up, I discovered that the National Journal Writing site wanted October to be the month; the National Blogging Post Month — aka NaBloPoMo — are using November. Whatever. Some people are writing or posting a journal/blog post every month and I didn’t know that before, but now that I do — yay, that’s a bandwagon I can jump on. So in addition to trying to make National Novel Writing Month numbers this month, I’m going to try to post a blog post every day. I suspect the latter will be easier than the former.

Yesterday, I finished the day with 1085 words. I’m okay with that. I’m slightly less okay with the fact that they were words for the same chapter that I’d written the previous day. I just couldn’t not delete. The previous day’s words… they didn’t work. It was lots of disjointed conversation, much of which could have carried the dialogue tag “explained”. The dialogue guy at the Florida Writer’s Association Conference suggested that all dialogue that should use “explained” as its verb be rethought and yeah, I rethought. My chapter had potential for energy, but it lost all that energy in discussions that related to world-building. Who spoke in what language, who understood what language, what different types of ghosts there were… yawn.

In context, the loss of energy was very literal, if opposite in its effects. Energetic ghosts suck the warmth out of the air. That would mean that they slow down the molecules in the air. My ghosts were not effectively stealing the warmth, but they were definitely slowing down the action. In yesterday’s chapter, they did a much better job of making it cold, and without slowing everything down. (I’m amused by the different meanings/uses of energy, but I suspect I’m not making sense here — sorry!)

Word count wise, I decided not to freak myself out. I’m including the words from both days in my count. I wrote them and I could include them in one long terrible scene for the NaNo word count purposes without feeling any sense of dishonesty, if I wasn’t worried about my novel being awful. It does mean that I’m already behind. Not going to worry about that, though. There’s plenty of time to catch up and maybe I’ll find the current today and have it whisk me along.

Meanwhile, it turns out that October 30th was not the last swim day of the year. Yesterday, in the peak of my frustration, unable to figure out how to fix the scene, I went outside, decided it was warm enough, and spent a very pleasant, very lovely hour or so floating in the pool. I am fairly sure I’ve never swum in November before but it was exceedingly nice. I’m grateful for the day.

In the evening, I went and hung out with my niece at the library. We went to Denny’s for dinner and Denny’s has added gluten-free indicators to its menu. I was so pleased that I ate gluten-free french fries with ketchup, disregarding the fact that nightshades cause joint inflammation which cause pain. Last night, when I was trying to sleep and my hands were throbbing, I thought it was still worth it, but this morning, when I tried to get out of bed, wow, not so much. Joint pain was at “not sure I can walk right now” levels and even as I type, part of me is aware of how much I hurt. It feels like I did an intense workout yesterday, but since I didn’t, I’m blaming the french fries. Alas. But I mostly write this as a reminder to myself — don’t be stupid. Potatoes aren’t worth it.

Today’s goals: words, words, words. Getting out of this chapter and back to Noah’s POV. Going to yoga if I can loosen up enough that I think it won’t be more pain than it’s worth. Walking the dogs and making my bed and eating only AIP-approved foods. All good goals! I’m hoping for a good day, despite its rocky start. Good luck to my fellow NaNo and NaJo ‘ers — I hope you find the current!

Day 3

03 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Randomness

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Yesterday’s writing was… well, abysmal. Lots of ideas, but I couldn’t put them into any kind of coherent order and I kept going off into weird sidetracks and getting stuck. Imagine being lost in the woods, where every path circles back to the same clearing where you started. Yep, that was my writing yesterday. Seriously, seriously annoying. But I went to evening yoga and it was great. I think evening yoga is just a little bit harder than daytime yoga, and apparently I’m at the place where that feels good. When I got home, I tried to make some order out of the words that I’d written including ruthlessly deleting all the ones that I truly hated. It’s a bad NaNo strategy but it felt great.

I had some shred of story thought in the middle of the night, something about why I’m going wrong, but I can’t quite grab it now. I think it had something to do with kayaking. Like I’m getting caught in the weeds, and I need to remember to steer toward the current? In the middle of the night, it felt profound and revelatory but then I went back to sleep.

I like what I’ve grasped of it, though. Today I’m going to try to steer toward the current. Aiming for 2K words to make up for yesterday’s lack. It can be done!

Morning gloom

02 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in Grace, NaNo, Writing

≈ 5 Comments

My new kitchen cupboards–not so new anymore, it’s been almost a year–are wonderful in many ways, most notably in providing storage galore. But they’re a deep maple color and the longer I live with them, the more I realize that the room feels darker than it used to. On a day like today, when the sky is gray and the air feels heavy with humidity, the kitchen feels like a place to eat gruel and dry toast.

I didn’t, of course. Salad with sadly frozen greens, which I assume provide the same nutritional value, but are decidedly unappealing. I need to remember not to put defrosting food on top of the salad green box — it never turns out well. Anyway, I’m trying to think of ways in which I could brighten my kitchen, without doing anything over-dramatic, like painting the cupboards. Maybe painting the walls? They’re white at the moment, but maybe if they were a sunnier color, maybe a pastel yellow? I could put higher watt bulbs in the light fixtures, I suppose, but I don’t want to add glare, I just want to make the room feel cheerful. I should check Pinterest and see what people have filed under cheerful kitchens.

I won’t be making changes today, though. Yesterday, I counted my word count as 1930 words. That was true, but it ignored the fact that I also deleted a bunch of words from Saturday, so my overall word count was not nearly so high. Still, NaNo started yesterday, so I figured I should treat it as a blank slate. Along the way of my writing yesterday, I started making a list of all the revisions that I’m going to need to make in Grace as a result of words that I’m writing now. It got frighteningly long quite quickly, but that’s okay. Yesterday’s chapter, which was in Dillon’s voice, felt like I was finally hitting that place where the characters start to act on their own initiative and the words start to spill out. It’s worth all the revisions if it helps me find the flow again. Of course, that’s easy to say today because I have no intention of starting these revisions until much, much later, but so it goes.

I don’t think I have, at this point in my writing journey anyway, stock characters the way prolific authors often do, but the character who was stealing the stage yesterday reminded me of Rachel from A Gift of Thought. She’s definitely not Rachel — she is much, much angrier — but I didn’t know this character mattered at all. For a long way in the story, she was just “crying girl” but lately she’s been fighting for space. A bunch of the revisions will belong to her, because it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that she’s important and that she should have been introduced a lot earlier. I like the way that’s unfolding. Inspiration, not just me making stuff up? But I really hope to finish this book someday, so I’d better get back to it!

If you’re doing NaNo, good luck today. More words!