Random Things I Love

Since I’m short on time with no blog post prepared and my NaNoWriMo novel calling, I thought I’d quickly share a couple of my favorite random things at the moment. Do what you will with that. 🙂

– Disney Princess. There has been a lot of flack around Disney Princess lately, what with the vast number of people who claim that the Princesses teach little girls lots of bad lessons about the important things in life (yes, most of the princesses are out looking for their prince, I’ll give you that), but I personally think it’s a major overreaction. I was obsessed with the Disney Princesses my entire life. My cousins and I must have watched The Little Mermaid about 10,000 times – we could quote every single word – and when I first got Beauty and the Beast I would literally watch it to the end and then hit “play” again. And guess what? I became an industrial technologist who hates cooking and cleaning and would rather sit around in jeans and a t-shirt than primp up with pretty clothes and makeup. The lesson is that watching cute, fun, musical movies with lovable characters does not define who you are going to become, even if some of the plot-lines are a little bit misogynistic. Let the kids have their damn cartoons.

– Scentsy. Much to the chagrin of my husband, father, and father-in-law, I’ve climbed about the Scentsy train. I’m not a great lover of the big burners that need a big flat surface to lay on because my house is not abundant in clear flat surfaces. But I love the cute little plug-ins, and some of the scents that are available just make me melt. I also fell in love with the “buddies”, which are cute little stuffed animals that you can stuff a scent pack into. My daughter has an adorable little teddy bear whose scent pack (“Newborn Nursery”) has lasted for over two years now. I recently started collecting the holiday burners to use as decorations, and I haven’t been disappointed yet…they’re so cute!

– My vacuum. This one might sound weird, especially since just two paragraphs ago I mentioned that I hate cleaning. But the fact that I hate cleaning is exactly why I love my vacuum. I’ve gone through a couple of vacuums now – we’re hard on them because we have two cats that refuse to keep their fur on their bodies, and I have an incredibly thick head of hair that is constantly trying to escape my head – and this is the best one I’ve ever had. I spent a little more money than I wanted to in order to get a Shark Navigator Pro, which seemed to have a lot of great reviews, and I couldn’t be happier. The swivel head is great for corners and tight spots, and the extra-long arm and detachable bucket make it super-easy to do stairs. Vacuuming is significantly less of a chore since I splurged on this particular piece of equipment.

– Scrivener. I’ve mentioned this before, but since I’ve been working on my NaNovel I’ve fallen in love with Scrivener all over again. There’s a bit of a learning curve, it’s true, but if you can convince yourself to sit down and just play around with it for a while you’ll find that it’s an extremely versatile tool that can make a writer’s life a hell of a lot easier. I especially love it for the organizational purposes. If I decide that an entire scene is meant for the trash pile, it is super easy to extract it from the story. If I have a dozen characters I can easily organize scenes so that I can locate the particular character I want to deal with today. I haven’t exploited even a quarter of the things that Scrivener can do and it’s still my favorite writing program ever.

– Retro Cartoon Reboots. We all know that reboots aren’t always the greatest things. Re-making a much loved movie, TV show, or video game has great possibility to destroy years and years of dedicated fan base. But in recent years there have been a few reboots of the cartoons that my generation watched when we were kids, and they’ve thus far been amazing. I regularly mention Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Hasbro’s My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I will continue to do so because both shows take wonderful, beloved old cartoons and turn them into something updated and amazing. They make homage to the old cartoons while still doing their own thing and being fun and cute and lovable.

– Pizzaronis. I know, I know, they’re not exactly health food, are they? But I had some this weekend at my mother’s party and it rekindled my love for the little pizza bundles. I ate these like they were going out of style when I was younger, and I would happily eat them every day even as an adult. YUM.

– NaNoWriMo. Even when I’m doing poorly (I’m two days worth of word count behind already) I still love this yearly challenge. Which is why I am now going to wrap up this post and get back to my new novel. NaNo participants, ho!

Fiction Fragment Friday: NaNoWriMo 2013 Edition

For the month of November I thought it only fair that I share snippets of my NaNoWriMo novel as I’m writing it. This year my fellow novelists and I are lucky enough to have a month of five weekends, so that means I can post five fiction fragments while I’m rushing to the literary finish line.

This morning my fragment is going to be quite short because, hey, I literally just started writing! But I hope that these few sentences will get you interested for what is to come. So without further ado, here are the first few lines of a novel I’ve tentatively titled: Bloodlust.

—–

I was only five years old when the world ended.

That’s a bit dramatic, I suppose, but that’s what it felt like at the time. I don’t remember much, of course – kids are so wonderful at suppressing what they don’t care to recall – but I remember the fear. I remember the looks on my parents faces as we looked up at the new sky for the first time, and I remember thinking that grown-ups should never look that terrified.

The ones who were old enough at the time tell us about how beautiful the Earth was once. They tell us about how green and lush the forests and meadows were, how hot and bright were the deserts, and the oceans… They tell us that the oceans were a crystalline, sapphire blue. I would find it all terribly difficult to believe if it weren’t for the pictures in my books.

These days the only green vegetation is what we manage to grow in our greenhouses. The deserts are freezing wastelands. The oceans and roiling black deathtraps. But the worst is the sky. The sky above us that once brought us light and warmth now brings us only sorrow.

Productive Prerequisites

With NaNoWriMo rapidly approaching, I’ve been taking daily digital wanders around the blog-o-sphere and Twitterverse to see what all the other writers are up to. One such fellow writer (and blogger), Daniel Koeker, recently wrote this post about the little things that he requires in order to be productive.

That got me, of course, thinking about the things that I require in order to be productive. The list that I came up with explains why I regularly have a hard time getting my brain to buckle down and write.

1. Comfort
I can’t write at all if I’m uncomfortable. That means sitting at a desk is pretty much out of the question. I have to be curled up on the couch or snuggled up in bed with a dozen pillows. If it’s chilly I need a fuzzy sweater or blanket. This is a major thing for me and is reason that I’m so peeved that my laptop’s battery is kaput and needs to be plugged in all the time. I thrive from being able to pluck up my laptop and snuggle in wherever I can be most comfortable.

2. Quiet
I’m not talking about ultimate silence here…just a reasonable level of quiet. I can work to music or even a television show, but if there are people trying to talk to me or distracting noises like a phone ringing or the neighbor mowing their lawn, I completely lose my train of thought. Even better, it seems to take me ages to get that train back in the station. My mind is just that easy to wander.

3. Nothing else to do
If that sounds impossible…yeah, it pretty much is. But basically the more other stuff I have to do, the harder I find it to concentrate and be productive. I’m the kind of person who sets out to write a chapter and instead ends up doing the dishes and going through my closet for clothes that don’t fit anymore. It depends on the number of things on my mental to-do list, but I find it very, very difficult to be productive at one thing (say, writing) when I know I have three dozen other things that I need (or want) to get done.

Other than that, for the most part, I don’t require a lot in order to be productive…just a desire to be so and a bit of willpower.

Make that a lot of willpower. >.>

What about you? What do you require in order to be productive?

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 43

As the season of spooking comes ever closer, my ability to get business done evidently devolves at an exponential level. In my defense, I did spend two days straight (Saturday and Sunday) standing in my kitchen with a glue gun, a metric ton of foam, and half a dozen cannibalized pairs of blue pants, and then spent a further day (yesterday) traveling two and from my hometown (an hour and a half one way) and back and forth between houses so that our families who live nowhere near us could see the baby’s completed Halloween costume.

It is at this point that I would like to mention that while I praise the creator of the hot glue gun, I also hope to never look at one again.

And with that bit of nonsense out of the way, let’s see how bad the week went, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

I am feeling, again, that I should simply stricken this goal from the list. While I’ve been managing to force myself to make small, good decisions (water instead of pop, chew gum instead of popping some candy, etc), I haven’t been getting any exercise in at all (unless you count the aforementioned 2 days of standing at a glue-gun station). In addition to that, my and my husband’s tradition of watching horror movies every night in October inevitably ends in my munching on snacks at all hours of the night.

On the upside, I haven’t gained any weight from all these poor habits.

I’m hoping to get back to a half-hour on the treadmill each day in November, since I won’t be stressed out trying to get the baby’s costume done. I will, however, be busy doing NaNoWriMo, so we’ll have to see how that goes, won’t we?

Editing Goal

As mentioned already, I spent a lot of time this week feverishly trying to finish the baby’s Halloween costume, thus I lost a lot of writing and editing time. Luckily I went a little crazy at the beginning of the week and managed to get quite a bit done. I currently have ten chapters completely finished, with five chapters remaining. I can’t honestly see how I could possibly get those last five chapters done by the end of the month, but I’m going to try. Even if it’s not perfect, I’d like to have the main round of edits done this month so that I can throw the manuscript at my beta reader, curl up in a ball to cry for an hour or so, and then move on to my NaNo idea. I’m sure by the end of November I’ll be sick as hell of my NaNo novel, so I can worry about the second round of zombie edits in December. 😛

1,000,000 Word Goal

Again, I lost a few days this week, but was quite fervent in the earlier days. Between editing changes and blog posts and the like, I managed to write 10,149 words this week. That brings me to just under 375,000 for the year. Since I’m hoping to push my NaNo word count up to 75,000 this year, I plan to be at approximately 450,000 words by the end of November. Then it’s just another 50-thou (JUST!) to hit half a mill. That would only be half of my original goal, but still a major accomplishment for me, since I don’t think I’ve ever written more than 100,000 words over the course of an entire year before.

And now that we have that over with for the week, I have less than 72 hours to try and edit 5 chapters. Excuse me while I go drown myself in coffee and chocolate.

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 42

I’m going to be honest right from the get-go: I have no idea what happened this week. It seems as though everything pretty much fell apart on me, or a couple of the days just vanished without me knowing. There was at least one day spent on a very long shopping trip, looking for the necessary materials for the little missy’s Halloween costume, so I know where that day went, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you what happened to the other six. So lets…let’s just go through the motions, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

I’ll admit right off the bat that there was no exercise done at all this week (unless you count that one day of wandering around malls for several hours straight). So I guess that completely demolishes my October mini-goal of exercising every day, hmm? I’m not entirely sure what happened, but it seems to have been a mixture of having a million other things to do and sleeping like death every night. Seriously, I’ve been sleeping about ten hours a night the last week. No idea what’s going on there, and it really cuts into the day.

Excuses, excuses, I know. But on the upside, I’ve been trying to do some little things to help myself perk back up, like forcing myself to eat something for breakfast (I am not a breakfast person; never have been, never will be), and drinking extra glasses of water throughout the day. As yet these little changes seem to be doing bugger all for me, so I’m starting to wonder if I’m not sick or something. Or maybe just stressed. Stressed is definitely a possibility.

As a side note, I bought myself two really cute, long-over-the-butt-style sweater shirts the other day…that has nothing to do with health, obviously, but I look really cute in them so I’m filing the purchase under “body image”. 😛

Editing Goal

This is my biggest disappointment this week because I was actually doing quite well and then just…crickets. Fields of chirping crickets. I did manage to get up an hour before the rest of the family yesterday and whip through a chapter, but I’m still behind if I want to finish by the end of the month. Hoping to grind through today.

The additional kick in the pants is that I’ve been sinking deeper and deeper into “evil internal editor” mode. Other writers will know this as the mode in which your internal editor starts to tell you everything that’s wrong with your novel and starts to scream obscenities about doing a complete rewrite. Successful writers will know this as the mode in which you have to grit your teeth, drown that annoying little voice in your head whatever way you can and just finish. No story is every really done, and it can always be changed, which is the kind of thing that drives an author mad, so you have to push past those impulses if you don’t want to be working on the same book for thirty years. I definitely do not want to be working on this book for the next thirty years. So I’m going to push through, throw it at my beta reader, and run away screaming. Hopefully once she’s read through it she won’t have a laundry list of items for me to change once NaNoWriMo is over.

1,000,000 Words Goal

Well I can’t say that it was my worst week, so I guess that’s something. Actually, it was quite a good week compared to some of my weeks from earlier in the year; it just wasn’t all I’d hoped for. Most of my word count came from scheduling blog posts, which hasn’t really be going as well as I’d hoped (why is it so hard to think of things to talk about in advance?), and a few are from yesterday morning when I realized I hadn’t been working on the editing and went nuts on a chapter. The grand total for the week is a respectable 7520. Respectable, but not good enough for my tastes. So here’s hoping I can get the fingers working again this week and rip through as much editing and as many blog posts as possible before month’s end. The NaNoWriMo monster is coming to steal me away, and he has chains and whips. o_o

Research and Restructuring

Working out the details for a new story can be a time-consuming pain in the butt. That’s what makes the Internet so great: there’s a wealth of information out there to help you decide where your story should take place, what kind of weapon your antagonist should carry, or what is the perfect name for your main character’s best friend. During National Novel Writing Month time that information is compressed into a neat little bundle in the form of the “Reference Desk” forum on the NaNoWriMo website. On the Reference Desk, NaNo participants from all over the world help each other answer the tough questions, and give assistance and opinions based on their own personal experiences.

I haven’t made great use of the Reference Desk in the past because most of my NaNo novels took place in made-up worlds where I could write whatever I damn-well pleased to make my story make sense. This year, however, my novel idea takes place in the real world, and requires my main character to travel the world a bit. So off to the Reference Desk I went, to ask for help. What I was looking for was assistance in choosing a main location for my story. I wanted a place that was a little off the map, somewhere were things like cell phones and massive amounts of entertainment are more scarce, but also somewhere where the residents celebrate Halloween, or a similar creepy-stuff-abounds kind of holiday.

What I quickly determined from the replies I received was that there aren’t many places these days where my requirements make a lot of sense. A few people pointed out, for example, that even in less civilized areas, cell phones are abound, and that some of the least likely places actually have higher cellphone-per-capita numbers because they never caught up on land-line installations and instead skipped right to cell. As I continued to read through the replies from people more knowledgeable than me, scene ideas and plot holes ran through my mind, and I began to realize that there probably is no good location that will suit all my needs for this particular story. I had a moment of frustrated indignation just thinking about it.

And then I realized something. I realized that I’m a writer, dammit, and writers improvise. The world might not always conform to meet our needs, but we have the power to change the world.

All of a sudden I had a plethora of additional ideas fluttering through my mind. My story wouldn’t take place in the present, no…but in the near future, yes. And there would be a disaster of some kind – nothing that would completely destroy the planet, but would lessen the planet’s population and destroy many forms of present-time technology. It all began to come together. I could see how this would work, how it would enhance the story, and even how it would flesh out the background of the main character. The fellow writers who responded to my post couldn’t give me exactly what I’d been looking for, but they helped me realize that I can give myself exactly what I’m looking for, if I’m just willing to be a little more creative.

The take-away from this post is two-fold:

1. The writer community is huge and helpful. The Reference Desk at the NaNoWriMo website is not always active in the non-NaNo season, but you can always find fellow writers in places like the #MyWANA Twitter feed, critique sites like Critique Circle, and the multitude of writer blogs (like this one!). Point being, there is always assistance out there if you need it.

2. Writers are adaptable, and improvisation is often the mother of some of the best ideas. If the details of your story aren’t working out, reconsider them. What would need to happen in order to make the details work out? What do you have to do in order to make that thing happen? Now do it!

Writing has a lot of facets other than the literal sitting down and writing. Tons of research is (unfortunately) one of them, and adapting your story ideas as a result of that research is (unfortunately) another one. But neither has to be as horrible as they sound. Join the writer communities popping up everywhere, and the whole system will feel that much simpler.

Not to mention, significantly less lonely.

Are you a part of any writer communities? Why or why not? Have you ever recruited the help of others in working some of the details of your story? Did it help? Have you ever completely changed a story based on researched information? Please share!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 40

We’re officially one week into October. Halloween and NaNoWriMo grow closer as the days get colder. And I have several dozen things to be dealt with, so let’s just jump right into it this week, shall we? 🙂

Health and Body Image Goal

As per my mini-goal, I’ve been getting a bit of exercise in each day, which has been a half hour on the treadmill. There were two days in the past week that I didn’t hop on the treadmill, but one of those days was spent shopping, so I got the exercise in by doing a lot of walking around and running after the baby, so really I just missed the one.

The treadmill-ing has been going well, and I can honestly say that I feel good after doing a half-hour program on it, but I can’t say the same about the whole “eating better” thing. For one thing, exercise makes me hungry. There’s no denying that, and I refuse to go around all day feeling like there’s a ravenous little beast in my stomach clawing to get out. For another thing, the hubby and I have been taking part in our annual October tradition of watching a horror movie every night, and watching movies late at night inevitably leads to snacking. True, I could be snacking on healthier things than chips and ice cream, but…yeah.

Feel free to yell at me for having no food-related willpower.

Editing

I can’t honestly say that the editing process has been going as quickly as I had hoped it would, but I can still say that it’s going pretty well. I’ve “finished” four chapters and am currently working on the fifth. I say “finished” with quotation marks because there are a couple of small details that might have to be changed once I’ve asked a few people a few questions of a few more knowledgeable people (mostly involving info on guns, of which I know positively jack). That’s the kind of thing that will only take a few minutes though, so I’m calling the editing process approximately 30% done. Ten and a half chapters left to do in 24 days, which is two and a quarter days per chapter. Think I can do it? @_@

1,000,000 Word Goal

Writing a blog post a day even on my off-days is going quite well. I already have a couple of posts scheduled in advance, and it’s my hope that I’m able to get ahead enough to have a good number of posts scheduled for during NaNoWriMo. Also, since a lot of the editing process has involved complete rewordings of key scenes, I’ve managed to rack up a word count over the past week of 11684 words. A little more would have been nice, but still very good considering that most of my time is being spent on editing old words rather than writing new ones.

All in all the mini-goals are going fairly well (aside from that whole eating better thing), so I’m happy so far. Now if I can work in a little extra time with the editing and also find time to start (and finish) missy’s Halloween costume, I’d be really kicking ass. Anyone have a time machine I could borrow?

The Countdown is On

October means a lot of things for a lot of people. It means that Summer is over and Fall is beginning. It means putting away tank tops and shorts and skirts, and breaking out sweaters and jackets. It means crunchy leaves on the ground, and less sun throughout the day. It means buying (or making) costumes for the kiddies, and giving out (or begging for) candy. It means spooky movies and ghostly TV specials.

And for myself it means the countdown to National Novel Writing Month.

Chances are that most of the people reading this blog will have heard of NaNoWriMo (as we call it) before, because in past years it’s become incredibly popular and well-known. But just in case you don’t know, National Novel Writing Month is exactly what it sounds like…it’s a challenge, which falls in November, for all writers across the globe to attempt to write a novel in one month. Since novels can vary dramatically in length, the number we use is 50,000 words. If you can write 50,000 words entirely within the month of November, you “win” NaNoWriMo.

This will be my sixth year participating in this yearly event. Of the five years I’ve already done, I “won” four times and came pretty damn close that one other year (last year). This year I hope to wash away the lost of last year and bag my fifth win.

Non-writers and skeptics don’t tend to “get” NaNoWriMo, but it is really quite the inspirational event for writers. For a lot of writers the challenge gives us the motivation – the little boot in the arse – we need to push ourselves into super-writer mode. The community over at the NaNoWriMo website is an amazing thing to behold, and throughout the month participants get pep talks and advice from published authors. Many NaNoWriMo participants have gone on to have their novels published as well, which proves that this isn’t just an event for posers. Thousands upon thousands of writers, young and old, participate in this event. Thousands upon thousands of people can’t be wrong, right?

This year I have high hopes because it’s looking like I’m still going to be unemployed through the month of November (not to say that that’s a good thing, but you know what I’m saying…), meaning that I’ll have more time to write than any other previous year. I hope to note only “win” by hitting the 50,000 word mark…I hope to totally demolish the 50,000 word mark. In fact, this year I plan to up my goal word count to 75,000 words. Life is nothing without goals, right? 😀

So what am I going to write about this year? I haven’t 100% decided just yet, but I am seriously considering writing a vampire novel. No, not a Twilight clone, or a Vampire Diaries knockoff… I’m talking about real vampires: powerful, evil, frightening, bloodsucking monster vampires. While I enjoy a sexy vampire as much as the next True Blood fan, I think it’s about time the world was reminded of what monsters are supposed to be all about…scaring you half to death!

Do you participate in National Novel Writing Month? If not, why not? If so, what are you thoughts on the event? If you are a participant, please feel free to leave me you username for the site! I’d love to add a few more writer buddies!

NaNo Spotlight 2013

This is a special Sunday post to share something quite fun.

Chris K, over at The Kelworth Files is doing a series of “NaNo Spotlight” posts, interviewing National Novel Writing Month participants, and I was the first “spotlight”, posted yesterday.

Though it seems to be a fairly popular practice, I’d never been “interviewed” by a fellow blogger before, so this was a pretty amusing experience for me that I’m glad to have had.

You can see my interview here, and stay tuned for more NaNoWriMo hyjinx in the near future!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 39

Since I did a brain dump yesterday, I don’t really have anything to start off this post with. But, I do have a number of October-based mini-goals to share as part of my accountability this week, so let’s just get on with it, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

This past week was no better than the last several weeks of reported nothingness. If anything, it’s been worse because I’ve been having some pretty strong and continuous cravings for all the bad things ever made; chips and pop are a particularly strong one. In fact, the bad habits of the past couple of weeks have caught up to me and I’ve actually gained a couple of pounds. I’m not absolutely certain, but I think I might have officially broken my highest ever weight, and I’m not happy about it.

Cue October Mini-Goal Numbers 1 and 2:

#1. Focus on eating better, including eating some kind of (half-decent) breakfast each morning, abstaining from pop, drinking more water, and making healthier suppers.

#2. Do some kind of exercise every day. This is probably going to mostly be going down on my treadmill for a while because I’ve reached a point of being so out of shape that most forms of exercise make me gasp and feel like I’m going to throw up, which I believe is counter-productive.

I’ll try my damnedest to do each of these for 31 straight days and see if it makes some kind of difference for me.

Editing Goal

As mentioned yesterday, I’ve been at a bit of a standstill the past week as far as my zombie manuscript goes. Much of this can be attributed to being busy working on the daughter’s room and a variety of other things, but a good bit of it is good old fashioned “I don’t wanna!”ness.

I’m not a fan of editing. I pretty much hate it with a fiery passion. But it has to be done, and I would like to have it done before NaNo starts so I’ll be distraction free for starting something brand new.

Enter October Mini-Goal #3: Work on editing for at least one solid hour a day. Lock myself in a room where the hubby and bubby can’t get at me if I have to. Think about nothing but the story for that hour. Go longer if possible and/or if my head hasn’t exploded by the end of the hour.

1,000,000 Word Goal

This past week has been pretty shabby. It’s been the worst week in quite a while, actually. Since I didn’t really do any editing stuff at all, and since I’m not currently working on anything new while I’m trying to deal with all the editing, the only actual writing I did was blogging, which only came to a total of 3433 words. I’m terribly disappointed in this. Terribly disappointed.

Enter October Mini-Goal #4: I don’t want to dedicate too much time to writing new stuff because what I really want to be focusing on is finishing up my zombie manuscript, but I also don’t want to completely demolish my word count in the process. Thus, for the 31 days of October, I’m going to try and write one blog post every day. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to post a blog post every single day this month; my posting schedule will remain as is, but the posts I write on off-days will help me keep ahead of myself moving into NaNo month. See? Sometimes I can plan ahead!

And now that I’ve written these four mini-goals down, hopefully I’ll be able to hold to them. I want you all to yell at me if I don’t, okay? Okay. 🙂