Thursday morning came at 3:30 a.m.  And yes, I was wide awake, so I got up.  I loaded the dishwasher and checked my email, then figured I’d get something useful done.  The Wordsmiths of Jefferson County meeting had been Wednesday night.  Writing prompts are the name of the game at the meetings, so this time we all gave three words to the pool, making a set of 24 words we had to use in a story.  So why not write since I was awake with nothing else to do?

So, I present to you Yarn Barn.  The underlined words are the 24 words we had to use in our story.

Yarn Barn

They say the Yarn Barn over in Mossville is an enchanted place. I think it’s a rather unenchanting place, myself, but then, I work there. Enchanting is full of princesses and ponies and everyone is happy and pretty and no one ever says a bad word. But when you work at a place, even a place like the Yarn Barn, you know its ugly backside.

And the Yarn Barn’s ugly backside is one Henrietta Jackson, owner and proprietor. Henrietta is older than dirt, but looks like she’s twenty five and drives a convertible. Some say she had herself dipped in formaldehyde before she turned 30, so she’d never get any older. I just think she’s a witch whose fountain of youth is over at the ‘Do or Dye Hair Salon, where Tammy, Amy, and the girls can make anyone look like someone they’re not. I’ve never been in the ‘Do or Dye, but I’ve heard the stories. Plenty of my high school classmates went their to get their hair done up for prom, and I’ve seen those pictures. None of them looked like themselves.

Makes me wonder what Henrietta Jackson would look like if she wasn’t going over to the ‘Do or Dye twice a week to get herself done up. As it was she had dandelion-yellow hair with chunks of purple and blue highlights that I’m sure she thought looked quite natural. And that was nothing compared to the time she showed up at the Yarn Barn with a beehive about ten feet tall, in a cobalt blue with a white streak up the front that looked like a giant spark coming off her forehead. It made me wonder what color her hair really was if you took off all the yellow and purple and blue. But the weirdest thing about Henrietta Jackson was what she wore. I’ve been working at the Yarn Barn for fifteen years, and every time I see her, she’s wearing plaid. She’s got plaid skirts and shorts and skorts and pants, and plaid jackets and shirts and scarves. She even has plaid shoes. I don’t know where you buy plaid shoes, but she has them.

And if she had plaid clothes and shoes, did she have a plaid house? I’d seen her house, it was over on Maple street, painted as yellow as her dandelion-yellow hair, with a blood-red door that made the house look like it was sticking out its tongue. The outside certainly wasn’t plaid. But the inside, maybe. There might have been a plaid couch and a plaid chair and plaid placemats on the table, and the refrigerator had to be plaid if the placemats were plaid. It would look ridiculous otherwise. And the bathroom had to be plaid, too, because how could the rest of the house be plaid and not the bathroom? Did they even sell plaid bathtubs?

Maybe there’s a store where all they sell is things made of plaid. All plaids of the rainbow, organized by main color, blue on one side, yellow on the other, green in the middle, red and purple on the corners, something like that. I could picture it, like an OCD dream.

Not that I knew anything about OCD, just because I was diagnosed when I was 11 years old. Mom said I had a preoccupation with colors and having them organized just so, because the greens couldn’t touch the reds. I just thought colors looked better separated, and I like rainbows. The doctor said I had OCD, just because my mother told him that I put all my clothes away in order of color, just like the rainbow. And I like to eat my food by color too. You can’t eat carrots before you eat mashed potatoes. Everyone knows white comes before orange.

In fact, it was easiest to eat when everything was the same color. Like all white food on Mondays, and red foods on Tuesdays. Much easier that way, no thinking about what order to eat the food in. I like orange day best, because it meant I could eat one white food with my orange food, just to mix it up. That’s because I can have Orange Roughie on orange day, even though it’s not orange and it’s not rough, it’s just fish. But it’s still orange, on account of its name. And besides, I like fish.

I like working at the Yarn Barn because it is organized by colors, too. In the corner where the fake flowers are, they are sorted by color, and put in bins all in a row. When I first started working at the Yarn Barn, Henrietta Jackson put me in charge of organizing. And I looked at that row of flowers, with the yellow flowers mixed in with the purple flowers, tainting my rainbow, and almost passed out. I didn’t do anything for three hours but put those flowers where they belonged, with the purples never touching the yellows. Everyone knows yellow isn’t next to purple! When I was finished with the flowers, I did the yarn, and the fabric, and then all the trims for the fabric. The next day I did the entire row of beads, which was easy except for those big mixed bags where they put all the colors in the same bag and shake ‘em up. It hurts my eyes to look at them, so I stay out of the bead row whenever I can. It’s almost worse than looking at clowns, with their costumes that don’t match anything and big red lips and orange hair.

Up at my checkout register I have all my notes on my bulletin board put up with clear plastic thumbtacks. Clear isn’t a color, so it doesn’t hurt to look at it, and when it gets mixed up with other things, it doesn’t hurt my eyes. I like clear, except for clothes. Because there are just some things you don’t want to see, you know? And I don’t like my clear backpack, either, the one that shows all my necessaries when I come to work. But Henrietta Jackson says no one can steal anything if they have a clear bag, so I carry my plastic backpack and hope no one notices that there are tampons in there the week I’m on my period.

This week at the Yarn Barn is our Christmas in July sale. Me and Henry Oaks had to go in the back and drag out all the board games and Christmas decorations and put them up in the window. Henry Oaks never wears plaid, thank goodness. Henry’s smart, he’s going to college and likes read me poetry. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to be married to smart Henry, but then I remember he uses big words I don’t understand, and it makes me mad. He said one time that Henrietta Jackson was “flippant,” which I thought was some sort of fish, but it turns out it’s an attitude. The way he said it made me sure I don’t ever want to be called flippant, so I am careful around Henry, because I like him and I want him to like me. He likes to say “someday all these naysayers will be sorry they doubted me.” I have no idea what that means, but he says it when he’s angry after school. And one day when I was mashing boxes out back, he said “what’s the clamor,” and I told him I didn’t have any shellfish, because you don’t eat shellfish unless it’s a Friday. The priest said so. He told me he thought I was maybe the funniest person he ever met, which made me giggle but I was totally serious about the clam thing anyway.

Henry said we should play Candyland at lunch. That was after we stacked up about a hundred Candyland games on the table. I’d rather play Operation, because I like the little plastic bones that don’t look anything like real bones, so they aren’t creepy at all. I know, I’ve seen real bones. When the hawk ate the bunny in the back yard when I was a kid, it left the bones and the fur, and it was the creepiest thing I ever saw. Our dog Blackie was barking and barking on the patio, but the hawk acted like he didn’t care at all. He just kept eating that bunny.

But Henrietta Jackson sashayed out in her plaid skirt and suit jacket with plaid pumps and told Henry Oaks and I to stop piddling around and get done with the Christmas in July stuff, that the bead shelves needed to be organized again, and to bring the red and green beads up front and put them by the window. I wish she hadn’t said that. I hate that bead row. It never does look right, and it hurts my eyes to look at it.

But, to the subject of this post.  Fall is coming.  I see it in the subtle change in the color of leaves, how the starlings and blackbirds are gathering in throngs on the telephone lines on the corners, and in the increasingly earlier sundowns.  I look forward to fall, have for my entire life, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it will soon be time for National Novel Writing Month!

I’m a dedicated Nano-er (some call themselves WriMo’s).  I have written in every National Novel Writing Month for the last seven years.  November brings its own kind of excitement for me.  By this time every year, I’m starting to chomp at the bit about writing in NaNo style, in burst of two or three thousand words at a time.  I begin outlining my story in my head, fleshing out my characters, and trying desperately to think of a title.  I write better stuff when I have a title, I think, although that may just be something I tell myself.

We are less than 90 days from the start of NaNoWriMo.  I hope if you’ve never tried it, you will try it this year.  And if you’ve tried it and not been successful, I hope you will try it again.  And if you’re going on your umpteenth year of trying and succeeding, well, I’m right there with you.

What are you going to do for this year’s NaNoWriMo?

Her “busy” nature was only going to lead to good things, and she soon discovered there is a creative writing group in our county, the Wordsmiths Society of Jefferson County. It meets at the local public library every Wednesday of the month.  She quickly became involved, creating a website for the group and finding speakers to come in and talk to the group.  She also started exercises for the group, using one of my favorite books, The Write Brain Workbook, a writing prompt book that I have used myself to write stories or to get me motivated.  And of course, she danced around me like a chihuahua, begging me to come participate in the group, and also asking if I would be a future speaker to the group.

How could I resist?  Of course I said yes and she scheduled me to talk the first Wednesday in August.

I attended my first meeting this past Wednesday.  Our speaker was Angie Fox, New York Times bestselling author of the Demonslayer series.  Angie was great, talking to us for a solid hour, and then spending another hour answering questions.  She was very forthcoming and open with information and opinions, and took a very encouraging tone when talking to us.  It was really great to have someone “in the business” be so open.

I will be talking to the group about NaNoWriMo and my writing process, as well as how I self-published. I am no Angie Fox, but hopefully the information I can share will be helpful to the group.

These are this year’s most popular baby names for girls.  And I have a problem.  A big problem.

Three of the names on this top-ten list are the names of FMC’s in the stories I’m working on right now.  All three of them have been attached to my characters for several, if not ten, years.  Isabella is the name of my female heroine in my untitled period novel set in Italy.  Emma is the name of the female heroine in the circus novel I’m currently editing.  And Mia, short for Euphemia, is the name of the female heroine slated for this year’s Nano novel.

And I have never read any of the Twilight books, although I know “Bella” is the name of the female heroine in those stories.  I’m not sure where Emma and Mia came from or why they are so popular.

Do I change the names of my heroines rather than publish them as they stand?  One thing I really hate is when overly-popular names make their way into books that I want to like.  I had to put down a book not too long ago because the main female characters were named “Tiffany” and “Meghan”.  The book was written in the mid-1980’s and was set in 1750’s England.  Those are not names common to that time period, but they are to the 1980’s.  I don’t want my novels to suffer that fate with any reader.

Even though Isabella (called “Bella” by her beau in my novel) is a perfectly good Italian name of that era, I am now worried about calling my character that.  And Emma…Emma fits this woman I am writing about.  I didn’t choose the name because it was popular, but because it fit her.  And Mia is short for Euphemia, a very old family name from my patriarchal line.  I hate to give it up, as Euphemia fits my rebelistic FMC in A Cabin in the Woods.

It just doesn’t seem right to change their names now.  It really doesn’t.

And I worry, if it’s boring to write, is it going to be boring to read?

So, to get myself energized again, I picked a scene later in the novel that I wanted to write instead.  I banged out just over 5,000 words in about three hours.  This is typical output for me when I’m inspired.  Just wish I could write the more boring stuff that fast.

And every time I write in this novel, I am reminded of how long it is probably going to be.  I wrote 5K about a storm and its affects on the circus.  I didn’t even get to the end of that particular scene, or into the next scene, which will take easily another 5K.  And this particular part of the story is months into the storyline.  There’s all that stuff from the beginning to the middle I have to write before I can get to the conclusion.  That’s a lot of words.  This will be the biggest one I’ve written, if it ever gets done.

I really do want this story to be written.  I want to see this book in print.  Getting there has been a complete obstacle course.  But I’m making it, slowly but surely.

In the meantime, A Cabin in the Woods, my Nano hopeful for this November and partially outlined story from my Two Year Novel Class, continues to tap me on the shoulder asking for attention.  And I realized the other night that it was not the story that is begging for attention, but one of the characters, who was supposed to be a bit player in the whole love scenario.  Kyle the Butcher has made it very clear to me that he is the love interest in the story, and that LeRoy the petulant landscaper has no place there, that Kyle is made for Mia.

After listening to what Kyle had to say, I had to agree with him.  So that story is going to take a very different turn than I had envisioned.  I am not usually a character-drive writer; my characters are important, but usually the story is more what I’m concerned with, and I mold the characters to fit the story.  This time, I think Kyle the Butcher (and sometime Bluegrass singer/steel guitar player) is going to be the love interest, and Mia is not going to have any choice but to fall in love with him.  He’s loved her all his life, despite her quirks, despite her standoffish attitude, despite her hermit-like tendencies.  I see Kyle and Mia in each others arms, twirling around the floor at a barn dance.  I see Mia “seeing” him for the first time, despite having grown up with him.  Yes, it will be a great story.

And it will be a great exercise for me to write a more character-driven story.  I’m looking forward to it.

But as the prednisone starts to kick in and the numbness in my hand abates, I am able to once again type, which means I’m once again able to communicate in the way I like to communicate – the written word.

Ahh, such a relief! The last six days have been a nightmare for me. I could surf, because I’d trained myself to use a left-handed mouse. But typing? Out of the question. So now that I’m able to get back to business, so to speak, this is on my list of things to do the next couple of weeks:

• Update all blogs (mostly done now)
• Get some tech articles up that have been lurking in my head – no tech articles published, no paycheck for March!
• Go back to editing either the Circus novel or We Eat Spaghetti in the Sun, my period Italian epic that is not quite as epic as it should be yet
• Work on the bylaws and other documentation for the non-profit group I am now secretary/treasurer for.

Ambitious, yes, but these things must be done or I cannot move forward.  I wish I could write with though alone.  That would really move things along!

The designer is also a writer and illustrator, mostly of young adult or children’s works. She said that if I was going to query agents and/or publishers, I could not do it with my self-published works. She suggested I start shopping another finished work instead, that the three I have published through Lulu are dead.

The problem is, I have no other finished work that is ready to be shopped to an agent. Nor am I particularly worried about that. The fact is that some self-published books do make it to traditional publication. This is actually happening more and more all the time, especially in my genre, which is contemporary romance. That doesn’t mean I’ll be successful, but it does mean that converting self-published materials into traditionally-published materials is not as difficult as it used to be. I have also not purchased ISBN’s for my books. So while they are “published” in a way, they are easily removed from existence on any database, because they aren’t on any databases to begin with. Any sales I’ve had have been through word of mouth and me carrying around copies of my books and guilting my friends into buying them. (Don’t judge me, the technique works!)

So, I will continue to move forward with creating my synopsi, one for each of my three completed (and self-published) novels, and then creating the queries and starting to send them out. The worst that can happen is they will say no. And I fully expect several of them to say no. But I also expect one to say yes, and one is all it takes.

I will also continue to move forward in finishing the two WIP’s I have going. I have other stories that need to be written, but if I keep writing and never editing, I will never have another finished book.

This weeks’ goal is to get my membership sent off to Romance Writer’s of America. I had planned to do that this past week, but other (non-writing) things got in the way. I really need a 30-hour day to get everything done, but since I cannot change the space-time continuum, I will just have to keep going in bits and pieces, starts and spurts, and eventually get where I’m going.

Happy Writing!

So today I opened an account on Query Tracker, paid for a premium membership (a bargain at $25), and started reading their articles on writing a query letter. I had heard of this site before, several years ago, at a St. Louis Writer’s Guild meeting. I just never checked it out. It gives me a place/way to keep track of any queries I send, and also gives me a list of agents that have been vetted, saving me a bundle of time in research. So, good move there.

Secondly, I printed off the membership form for Romance Writers of America, an organization I know I should be a part of if I am going to continue down this path of writing romance novels (and I think I am headed down that path). The membership is steep (over $100) but probably worth it. We’ll see what I think next year when my renewal comes in the mail.

Third, I got some really great advice from a friend of mine that I’m going to try to stick to. “Set a schedule,” she said. As in, set a schedule when I’m going to work on query stuff, when I’m going to work on writing stuff, etc. Baby steps, small steps, little bits, but devote myself to completing that stuff on a regular basis. If I tell myself I am going to spend two hours a week working on queries, then I need to stick to that and make it happen. Yes, that’s two precious hours of writing time lost, but I also know realistically that I waste two hours a week doing nonsense stuff that I can certainly put to better use. So this coming week I’ll see what I can figure out as a regular schedule for doing not only writing, but also the ugly part of writing and sending queries.

I have great stories and they deserve an audience. They will never have one if I don’t start working towards getting an agent and getting these things traditionally published. I have to keep that goal in mind, or I will continue to be unproductive. I am not getting any younger.

December is busy, for sure. But it’s no different, really, than any other month of the year (except for maybe January, which is dead dead dead). December brings cookie baking and holiday-card writing, and tree-decorating and shopping. And parties. But that’s really no excuse. How can I not manage to find a few minutes in every day to write? Even if it’s a few hundred words, it’s something.

It isn’t about the time, that’s why. It’s about the motivation. Somehow, not having a deadline hanging over me makes it easier to procrastinate. And that’s just ridiculous. Do I never want this story to hit print? Isn’t that why I’m writing, to begin with, so others can read it? How can they read it if it hasn’t been written? I always say, “if I had an office” or “if I wasn’t so busy doing _________” but those are just convenient excuses for not getting the job done. It is my problem, and I need to fix it.

How to fix it is the big question. I know of no magic potion or device to employ. I’m going to have to do this for myself, by myself, somehow.