I see my attempt to write once weekly has just managed to crash and burn, and I only made this resolution earlier this month! Oy vey!
Anyway, trying to get back to it.
I have a Kindle dilemma. I have one. It’s the low-end-with-advertising one, and it is full of books I’ve downloaded. Okay, 99% of those books were free, as I’m too cheap to pay for books I’m obviously not going to read.
There, I said it. I’m not reading the books. I just do not like the Kindle. I’ve tried. I’ve dragged it around with me places and read a page or two or three while waiting for something (doctor’s appointment, daughter to get off work, prescription to be ready), but I’ve never actually finished a thing on the device. In the same time I’ve had the Kindle (about six months), I have read more than a handful of other books. About ten or so, I estimate, because I’m more of a writer than I am a reader.
The point being, I really dislike the Kindle. I dislike it enough not to use it. It sits on a shelf and runs down and when I do pick it up, I have to plug it in for an hour before I can use it. By then I’ve moved on.
My paperbacks (and hardbacks) never need charging, no matter how long I let them lay. They are very forgiving in that regard. They also don’t have screens that crack, software that needs to be updated. They just sit there and wait until I’m ready for them. They fit in my purse bag, they are lighter most times than the Kindle, which makes my hand hurt after a while, and I can flip a page and keep reading very quickly, unlike the Kindle that has to flip pages with a button, that if I keep my finger on, I keep pushing by accident and then have to stop and push the back button.
I prefer a real book. I’m not geeky enough, I guess.
Since I now live in a part of the country that sees much snow, it means I should have no problem carving out time to write in the evenings. It is cold outside (although beautiful) and being out in the dark often means encountering wildlife I’m not sure I want to meet face to face. At least, at night. We have foxes and coyotes, racoons and squirrels. We also have cougars, moose, deer and elk the size of semi-trucks. Bears are asleep by now (thank goodness) but they can be an issue in the summer. So while I’d rather be out taking a walk at night, instead of sitting on my butt, I’m usually not brave enough to go out there on my own, at least without some big giant dog with me.
And I don’t have a dog.
So, I’m writing. Nothing in stone, nothing permanent, nothing that may turn into anything, in the end. But it’s a snippet of something I thought about over the holidays, and decided to build out into a story to see where it took me. Maybe I’ll use the idea later in a novel, or create a serialized set of characters that I can write about regularly, online, and see how it goes.
We’ll see.
I have managed to form a writing group in my area. We started with NaNoWriMo but those of us who still want to write are meeting once a month. It is similar to the group I had in Missouri, and it is important to me to be with other writers at least once in a while. This is only our second month meeting, but I’m sure will will grow as we go, especially if we can get some advertising out there.
That’s this weeks’ writing update. Two weeks in a row. Not bad!
I wasted much of my writing life this past year. Not wasted, exactly, but was so stressed and overworked that I spent much of my free time doing brainless things, like playing games or crocheting or reading trashy novels. Between losing my job, getting a new one, and moving my family across country in the middle of one of the hottest summers in the midwest, there just wasn’t a whole lot of me left to be creative with my words. I missed an opportunity to give a piece of work to a publisher who wanted it, all because I just didn’t have the energy or time to get it going.
And thus, the blog fell off as well. Even my other blogs fell off, and I’ve really felt that lack of writing.
But, it’s a new year. We are (mostly) settled in our new home state, although we will be moving to a different house sometime in the next six months. My job has leveled out and I know pretty much what to expect. There is some homesickness, especially with the holidays, but in general, I’ve settled in and am quite happy with no only my job, but where I’m living. That’s something.
And I did participate in NaNoWriMo this year. My story was atrocious and incomplete, lacking any kind of a solid plot anywhere in there. But the characters are great, and maybe someday I’ll re-write it and make it into something. Along with all those other stories I need to re-write. And all those new stories that haven’t even hit the page yet!
I did start working on what I hoped was going to be a sweet little Christmas story, but in my usual way, there is just too much there to be a short story. So, I’m going to mull on these characters a bit, see if they want to tell me their story. There is one in there, somewhere, just have to figure out what it is.
My goal this year is to do better with the blog, writing at least once a week (Sundays) as I originally intended with this blog. Maybe I’ll review a book, talk about a project, share a contest, or just write a little story. As long as I’m writing, it will all be good, right?
If I can’t inspire myself to write, then at least I can keep busy. I signed up for a writing class through our local library. There are actually more than a dozen writing classes being offered, all online, and all for free. I’m about half-way, or a bit more, through the How to Write a Romance Novel class. I will finish it this coming week and move onto another class. It keeps me busy, keeps me writing almost every day, and that’s good for me.
I also have been setting up my office in my new home. This has been a bit of a long process as I acquired furniture by bits and pieces, and finally have emptied most of my boxes onto shelves or into drawers. It now is workable. My office is on the sun porch, which I hope will be cozy enough to be in this winter. It is lovely in the middle of summer, as it faces north and gets a good breeze. On especially hot days I just close it up and open the door from the house onto the sun porch and let the a/c drift out. A fan running, and I’m in good shape. The only thing missing out here right now is a nice comfy chair and footstool, for when I just want to sit and read, not work.
The view from the sun porch looks out onto my small back yard, which has some nice little trees in it, and a nice big privacy fence around it. I have hung pretty rainbow spinny things from the tree branches, and hung a very large pair of painted terracotta sun/moon figures on the fence where I can see them. I also hung my windchimes from the gutters. We live in an area that almost always has a breeze, so I get to hear them tinkle most of the time.
It’s a good and quiet place for me to be. And mostly, my family leaves me alone when I”m out here. It means I have no excuse for not getting things done.
I just finished Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. It took me quite a few weeks to read it, not because it was slow, but because I was. I was reading it on my period hour in ten or twenty-minute snatches. It was actually the perfect book for that kind of reading. It is written in two- to four-page “chapters” that are just enough to digest in the small amount of time I have to read during my lunch at work.
The book is not new, having been written in 1985, but it is just as appropriate today as it was then. The real gist of the book is that you should write. Just write. Stop rethinking every word, stop saying you don’t have enough time or not the right attitude. Interspersed amongst this common theme were some other important details, however. One is, don’t take every bit of writing seriously, as the author may not have intended it to have a deeper meaning and maybe it was written just to be written. The second is that all writers think they are bad and not good enough or worthy enough. Not that you need to be arrogant and ego-centric, but if someone tells you your writing is good, then you darned well better believe them!
I am now recommending this book to every aspiring writer I know. I bought mine for 50 cents on the sale rack at the library. My copy is water-stained, coffee-stained, and dog-eared. This is the sign of a very good book! It is going to go proudly on my writing bookshelf to be read again (or loaned to others that might need it).
The other thing I did this week was to sign up for a writing class. My local library has access to over 500 free online classes. There is everything from accounting to zoology. I decided writing might be the best place to spend my time. I am about 1/3 of the way through the Romance Novel Writing class, and there are at least a dozen other writing classes I can take as well. Each session is relatively short, and can be completed in about a half-hour, including a test. If I complete the class with at least 70%, I will receive 1.5 CEU’s, as well. Bonus!
And free is good!
Nearly two months without a blog post here. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, although I have not been writing as much as I would like. It means I’ve been busy trying to settle into a new home, a new job, and whole new life.
And I couldn’t be happier, overall.
My job is awesome, and about to ramp up incredibly over the next few weeks as students come back to class. It’s a new college, new rules, new procedures, and new hierarchy, and I spent a lot of energy the first month just trying to figure it all out. I’ve now worked just about six weeks, and finally got a real desk. I’m soon to get a real chair, instead of the deteriorating hand-me-down I’ve been using. Progress!
As for writing, I’m doing it, just in bits and pieces. I’ve been keeping up with my Momilies blog, trying to post two or three times a week so people know what I’m doing. I keep up with my daily picture posting on the 365-Degree Blog too.
And, I submitted the first three chapters of Without a Net to the publisher. It will be four weeks Monday and I’ve not heard anything yet. I think I’ll send an email Monday asking if there’s a status that can be shared.
In the meantime, I keep writing and editing. The cool thing about living where I live now (Longmont, Colorado) is I’m actually getting more stuff I can use in my circus novel. Like, the way the Hispanic men here dress, especially the older ones. They may be driving a rusted out rag-tag vehicle, but they wear their starched button down shirts tucked into their black jeans, over dusty boots, and always wearing a cowboy hat or fedora. Their belt buckles are silver and as big as a toddler’s head. Their hair is black and smoothed back with something shiny, the way men used to wear their hair when I was a child. They dress like this to go to the grocery store. Or to Walmart. Or to walk over to the local cantina for a beer or some tequila. They always look so formal. I’m going to have to use this in my novel.
National Novel Writing Month is a little over two months away, and I’ve been narrowing down ideas to work on. I may work on A Cabin in the Woods, or do something completely new. We’ll see. There is a big group of Nano-novelists in this area, so I won’t lack for writing buddies when the time comes.
I just wish I could find a writing group that meets regularly, even if it is just for social reasons. There may be a group in my town, but they have no website and no information posted except some guy’s name and a phone number, and he hasn’t updated his blog in more than a year. So that group may be defunct. I miss my Wordsmiths, and I miss my Nano-writers that meet every month. I’m starting to get the lonelies; I need the interaction with others, and work doesn’t count!
Worst case, I just start my own group. We have a great library here, and I may just start there and see what I can concoct.
For now, it’s back to writing. I have a novel to finish!
So, about a week and half ago I got an email from the editor at Wild Rose Press who took a look at my query. Could I forward her three chapters of my novel for her to look at?
A week later she sent the request again, since I had not responded.
Ack. That’s because I don’t have three chapters to give her! I have two. And they are mostly back story and explanation. So I wrote her back and explained that I was in the throes of preparing for a cross-country move and that I would have something to her by early this coming week.
Ack. I have been packing and doing minor repairs on the house, labeling and staging stuff for a yard sale, trying to find a house to rent in Colorado, trying to finish up UFO’s (Unfinished craft projects), trying to see family and friends “one last time,” and trying to get through the remains of the two weeks I have left at my job.
Write? Who has time for that?
But the deadline is not going to budge, and I have no excuse for not getting this done. Sheesh. It’s not like I don’t know what the third chapter is supposed to be and all, right? Ack.
So you know where I’ll be between tonight and tomorrow night. Typing my little fingers off on that third chapter and getting it sent off tot he publisher.
I got a response back to my query of Wild Rose Press. They are passing my query onto the editor of the line that I am interested in. I will hear from someone within 45 days.
Since the story is not finished, I really need to get on the ball and finish it. And since I didn’t write it as a traditional romance, I have some serious changes to make too. The hero and heroine need to meet within the first couple of pages; I don’t have them meeting until much later in the book.
What to do, what to do…
At least I know I can write a novel in 30 days, or less…
I’d better get cracking!
I was challenged a few weeks ago from one of the ladies in my writing group. For whatever reason the night of our weekly meeting, it was just her and I. And we were talking about the progress that was being made for publication on her book. She had queried a story to Wild Rose Press and been asked to provide a manuscript. She was then signed.
Wild Rose Press is small, and not very old (five years) but they are all about romance. And I, of course, write romance.
She encouraged me to query out one of my stories. I have several projects close enough to done to query with. We talked about which story I should use. Then came the challenge; the next time both of us were going to be at a meeting was three weeks later. She challenged me to create a query for one of my books and have it ready by the next time we met, May 18th.
Being the master procrastinator I am, I put it off until May 18th. Mostly, when I thought about it, I sat and wondered which story I should query. There’s the Italian historical that has no title, but is a complete story needing very little to bring it to ready. There’s Without A Net, written three different times now and still not completed, but with really great potential. Set in a circus, something I’ve done an awful lot of research on, this story should be done, as much time as I’ve put into it. And then there’s A Cabin in the Woods, my semi-paranormal story that features a strong third character who is a ghost. That story isn’t done at all, but bits and pieces of it are written. I have a pretty good idea of how I want to write it.
Three choices. Three pretty good choices. So on May 18th, when I got up in the morning and after I’d had my first Diet Coke, read through my email and news sites, I opened the Wild Wood Press website and started to read about their various lines. Champagne Rose, Tea Rose, Black Rose, Red Rose, all have a different sub-genre. I debated about the Italian historical for the Tea Rose line, but I worry that my historical accuracy is not quite there yet as I’m having a bit of trouble finding relevant research. The ghostly story would be great for the Faery Rose line, but the story’s not written enough for me to query in any kind of confidence. That left the circus novel, and the Champagne Rose line.
Of course, I went on to other projects. I wasn’t seeing my friend until 6 p.m. Why be in a hurry?
So I wrote my query at 5 p.m. while eating dinner, of course. All that sweat and worry and it took me maybe 20 minutes to write. I modeled it on the query that got my friend a contract. Short, simply, no fluff. I read it to her at the meeting, and she liked it except she said I needed to add the word count. I had to guess, since the story isn’t completely written.
Then when I came home, I sent it off. Now for the waiting. And as much as I put it off for literally years, it was pretty easy to do. I don’t know why I waited.
Now, the next task at hand is to actually get that story written completely. I have a lot of work to do!
This is the story I submitted for publication in the Tongue in Cheek History of Jefferson County. I hope you enjoy it!
