I Forgot the Fun!

Before I wander into the forest of my own blog, I take time to appreciate others who have gone before me. Today, that was the best thing I could have done.

After reading AmyBeth Inverness's offering, my eyes were caught by her "SyFy Question of the Day." Being a huge fan, I took another detour.

Wow! Now, keep in mind I did this at work. In a math class. With lots of students. Lots of suppressed chuckles and snorts coming from my desk. Lots of amazed glances coming from my students, who were just trying to get their work done in peace.

Oops. Sorry, all.

I'm posting a link here for everyone to enjoy. And, if you're at work, spread the love. If it's allowable, of course.

http://amybethinverness.com/2013/05/31/scifi-question-of-the-day-your-lightsaber-is-actually-a-sonic-screwdriver/

This reminds me that I'm free to have fun with my work. Indeed, for it to be successful, I've got to have fun with it.

A big shout-out to you, AmyBeth, for reminding me that this is a joy as well as a job.

See you all Sunday!

First Round Final Bits

I'm here at Starbucks, coffee by my hand, ready to rip into planning. I still want to have this entire book planned and organized before I start writing again on April 1st. (Hmm...doesn't sound like an auspicious day, does it?)

The first thing I'm going to do today, though, is look at Kristen Lamb's post on POV. I've been wavering on whether I should choose first or deep third, and hopefully she'll give me some insight. She's always brilliant - she's one of the people I actually keep a folder on.

Here's to productivity!

I hope everyone enjoys the holiday - and takes a well-deserved break.

I've Got the Blahs...

Everything has fallen off-track for me. I've given in on pizza and chicken. My only triumph on the chicken was that it happened to be rotisserie, not fried. A small gain, but a good one.

Writing? Hah! I think I've managed about 250 words since last Sunday, and plotted about three scenes. And I've only figured out where to put one of them. Then again, maybe not. Hmm. Have to take a look at that again. Thank God you can reorder things easily in Scrivener. I keep one scene per chapter while I'm working and planning, to make everything easier to shift if I need to.

The only upside to this week is that I gained another private student. That's a great thing, and very much appreciated at my bank.

Well, since my creativity button doesn't seem to want to work this morning, I think I'll put on my exercise clothes (t-shirt and sweats) and go to the gym. Something good has to come out of today, right?

See you Wednesday! (If I have anything to report...)

An Uneven Week So Far...

I made it to the gym yesterday! I actually took a yoga class! Wow. And guess what I discovered? I'm a heck of a lot more out of shape than I thought. And I hate floor-to-ceiling mirrors. A lot. But that's okay - at least I made it there. And I lasted the entire hour. Woo hoo!

I've already missed the yoga class for today. If I'm lucky I'll get to the gym this evening for some cardio. If not, I'll just have to take a walk around the apartment complex after I make dinner.

I haven't done any grocery shopping since my last post, so that goal is unchanged.

And now, for the writing portion of our evening...

I've done some plotting, but for "Blood, Breath and Fire", not "Immortal Blood." I'm thinking about taking a side trip back to Rassa for a little while. I woke up this morning discovering a couple of other things about the history of that world, so I think I need to  hang there for a bit.

My cooking is going well, sort of. I did buy Boar's Head beef hot dogs for dinner last night, but I have managed to stay away from Publix's Fried Chicken and Papa John's pizza. It's a process. I'm going to try to get more recipes from a blog called "Poor Girl Eats Well". There's some great stuff there. Right now I'm eager to try a quinoa recipe that has butternut squash, dried cranberries, kale, apple, and a couple of other things in it. Sounds like it might be a good thing to take for lunch tomorrow. I'm working all day this semester on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, so lunch planning is something of a priority.

See you all on Sunday!

Shoulda Taken A Left Turn At Albuquerque

I got lost this week. But, you know how sometimes getting lost can lead you to a good place? That might've happened. Let me explain.

I have a series - four books plotted, the first being written. It's called "Fireheart." I put that aside to finish the first book of the Witches and Weres series, called "Immortal Blood." That's what my earlier-than-beta readers decided they wanted to see finished first. Fine. I went with that.

I mentioned in my last post that I got an idea for a short story, now called "Blood, Breath and Flame." I discovered this week that this short story takes place on the same planet, Rassa, that the Fireheart series takes place on. In fact, the protagonist, Jaelyn of Darislay, is the progenitrix of the family who turns out to be the rulers of Rassa, many generations down the line.

I also found out about a war that takes place sometime between Jaelyn and Alizaane (the heir of Rassa in Fireheart). It's fought against those with psychic ability and the temples that support them. Some survive, fleeing the centers of population where the temples are. They and their descendants become known as "the Scattered." In Fireheart, one of these turns out to be the hero. He's a trained assassin who comes to Alizaane's aid as her bodyguard.

Whew!

So, there was writing done. But not on the project I expected. I can't even say there was a lot of actual writing done, but there was a good deal of history and notes.

Other goals:

I'm getting to the gym later today. I plan on yoga and a desultory bout of basketball.

Grocery shopping today was good. I couldn't purchase as locally as I wanted to, but I managed to keep it in the United States. I kept to my goal and didn't buy the fresh peaches -- but I sure wanted to!

How's everyone else doing?

Wandering in the Fog

I'm feeling a little vague right now, and my work is reflecting it. I think I've had something of a mental breakdown after Nano, probably to look for energy.

I haven't gotten a lot accomplished on Immortal Blood. The only progress I've made, in fact, is finding out the approximate age of Akhenaten when he died. A little known piece of information that would have a negative impact on my manuscript if I didn't know it. So, I guess that's good.

On the upside, I actually walked through the doors of the gym on Saturday. Wow, I'm more out of shape than I thought! Motivation or despair - I'm not sure yet. I'm hoping for the former. I also, on the way home from a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert yesterday, got an idea for a book of short stories/novellas that all link together, with a vaguely Christmas theme. Right now, in Scrivener, I'm calling it "Three Wishes."

My food goals are so-so. I didn't have fried chicken this past week, although I was craving it and it would have been REALLY convenient. The guys begged for pizza one night, so I ordered it. I got a veggie pizza for me with light cheese, and they got their sausage pizza. Papa John's has a special going on with a 5-sausage pizza. Blech. I tasted it, but it was way too...meaty...for me. I need my veg.

Holiday shopping? Not finished. But a good deal of it is in my Amazon cart, waiting to be shipped when I get paid on Thursday at midnight. How's that for cutting it close??

I hope you and your families have a wonderful, safe, and happy holiday!

Why Negative Coffee Times Negative Coffee Equals Positive Evil

The end of the semester is winding down here at the college. I didn't have a lot of students Monday, and when afternoon rolled around, I was fading fast. I'd only slept a few hours on Sunday night, and not well. My  coffee addiction tried to send me to the coffee stand downstairs, but my logical mind prevailed, reminding me that if I had coffee in the middle of the afternoon, I'd face another sleepless night. Oh, bother.

So, Kris, who was in the lab with me and studying for a Calculus final, began sketching my babbling on the board, in the form of a graph with a cracked coffee mug. The mug was slowly dripping coffee into the negative quadrant of the graph (any value here will be negative). We all know that, in algebra, a negative multiplied with another negative will give you a positive; in physics, we'd need to determine how fast we'd have to drink the coffee. (A linear function -- f(x) = x -- was drawn through the graph, bisecting the coffee mug and giving us an arbitrary line from which to determine how much coffee we had available to drink. Once it dripped below the line, we'd be * outta luck.)

So, by extrapolation, here are the parameters of the graph:

coffee = good
-coffee = bad
(-coffee)(-coffee) = +evil.

Makes sense, right? (Yes, and I agree, we should have had more work to do that afternoon!)

Goals? Oh, right, let's talk about that.

Pages: Met, thanks to Nano.

Exercise: Nope. I've been tutoring or dealing with pre-Christmas stuff whenever I've not been working.

Planning: Yes. So much so that around 4:30 this morning I woke up, realizing that I needed to find out the age of the "death" of Akhenaten so I could reasonably determine whether he had grey hair or not. Nothing like obsessing, right?

Food: Managed to stay away from the fried chicken still. Pizza, though, I ordered some because the guys asked me to. And since there was a new pizza on the menu, I tried it. I didn't like it. Yay! I did order a vegetarian pizza with light cheese, just so I could feel a bit better about my bad behavior.

How's everyone else doing?

And So Ends Another Round...

Where in the world did the time go? And when are we going to start up again - I'm already planning my goals for the next round. (Oops! I just saw the start date in Kait's post. My bad.)

I started out slowly, but once I latched onto Story Engineering, I felt things begin to fall into place. Now that I have a procedure, it's going to be much easier for me to make visible progress. There are times when being a Capricorn and a Type-A personality is not a good thing...I'm such a perfectionist sometimes it's hard to get where I need to be.

I'm so glad I discovered Row80. I know people have said this before, but it's true - no one knows the ups, downs, frustrations, and joys of writing like other writers. Let's face it - if we tried to talk about some of this to Muggles, we'd probably be locked up (for our own protection, of course) and forcibly medicated.

I used the word "Muggles" above because in a very real sense what we do is magic. We create. We produce things of out thin air. Houdini himself couldn't do this.

Doesn't it make you want to dash to the keyboard right now? It does me.

See you there!

Finding the Writing Magic

Something struck me this morning. Sipping on coffee and thinking about gearing up to write, I suddenly asked myself why it was so easy to write backstory and have everything fall into place. I mean, the first draft can be an agonizing process, slow, torturous, feeling like you're walking through quicksand that's halfway up your thighs. And that's on a halfway decent day. Why doesn't it work that way with backstory?

Why is freeing yourself from self-imposed shackles so hard? And how do you cut them off?

Nora Roberts said once (in some interview I read somewhere) that you just have to vomit out the first draft, and then fix it up later. When I think about that, I find it much easier to work. When I lose sight of that direction, everything becomes murky and confused. Nora's advice gets me through Nano every year. But I sure have problems remembering it from day to day.

What do you use to motivate yourself on days when the vision eludes you?

BTW, I still plan on blogging during our down time between sessions, so feel free to pop on by.

Happy creating!

Lara

Creativity is Bipolar

It's true - creativity really is bipolar. At least, it sure seems to be. No sooner had I written my last blog post about how difficult it was to write, blah, blah, blah, then wham! I get hit with a case of diarhhea of the fingers. I haven't been able to stop. It just gets aggravating when I have to do something else. Like work.

On with the Story Engineering quest. I've left the "what if" questions, and I've moved on to the characterization of my protagonist, Dr. Hayleigh Cameron, Egyptologist, epileptic, caffeine-addict and witch. I'm finding out lots of interesting things about her and her background. It makes me never want to put down the pencil.

Literally, I can't type any more on this. I have to get back to the story.

I hope everyone is doing well, and I'll see you on Sunday. Maybe I'll be on to my antagonist by then. Let me tell you - he's a beaut!

Talk to you soon...

Lara