Chapter 10 was finished and sent to my critique group. I deleted 1500 words of a 2000 word short story and then rewrote them. I spent time with my Mother-in-law and spoke to my own for nearly an hour.

The most important thing that happened recently, is that my tablet was returned finally! Apparently it was a software issue. I had to download all of my apps and such again. I may need to do some tweaks again to get it back to where I want it’s usability to be. I can say that it is so nice to have it back, which leads me to my main discussion.

I try not to depend or require any of my tools but there is something about having your prefered unit at your fingertips, ready to obey your every command. It’s a small thing and I think writers need that little bit of stability.

Most people don’t like change and at our heart, we’re the same as everybody else. When we find a system that works we don’t want to change it. As much as we hate changing our rituals and habits, I think we hate having to get used to new tools even less.

I don’t know about other writers but I can’t stand using systems or computers that aren’t mine. I can, but I rally do hate it. In most cases I would almost prefer to not write rather than use someone’s else’s computer.

I will try other writers pens. Heck, I’ve tried to write using my husbands computer before. It never works as well, my creativity seems stunted and I am always left feeling that my own tools are better.

I think part of it is that we are loathe to waste our time. When we type on our computers, we know how it feels, how our fingers react to the keys and how we old our fingers to make it work perfectly. On other people’s units, we’re uncertain and we hate the change.

My logical brain (yes, I can see some of you now saying, “wait, she has a logical side?” I do, indeed, have a logical side.) tells me that its a crutch. If I can’t do it without the crutch, what makes me think I’m good enough to do it with it?

I try to drown out that voice. Not because I think its lying to me, but because it isn’t helpful. I know I can do my magic anywhere but I’ve also learned that it comes easier when I’m comfortable with the devices I’m using.

So long as I’m not refusing to move forward out of stubborness, I can still be moving ahead. And since that’s what it’s really about, I think I’m doing all right.

Some days it’s easier than others to put your nose to the grindstone and get some work done. As an example, Friday and Saturday I got very little done. No matter how I worked on it or kept my work up on my computer screen, I was having trouble paying attention to it.

Today, on the other hand, I woke up, read for about an hour in bed and then opened my computer and started working. I wrote about 1k in an hour and a half (okay, so I’m a slow typer) and then did some cleaning and got our laundry started. Then I got back to my computer and wrote another 1k.

I finished that scene which means that tomorrow, I’ll be able to work solely on editing.

It’s a really nice day when everything works so well. I find it most interesting that I tend to work in jumps that way. I’ll get nothing done, nothing done, nothing done and then the next day I’ll make up for the prior three. On the other hand, I’ve found that given two days vacation, I will work happily getting work done every day.

It makes me wonder just how much my day job is killing my writing. I make up the work (mostly) but it leaves me exhausted all the time. I’ve compared it before to working two full time jobs, because even when I’m not writing, I’m still engaging with story and working on writing related things.

I wish I had a solid answer here for this dilemma or even knew if it is a dilemma. Really, I’m still getting the work done, just more slowly than I’d like. On the other hand, something that leaves me exhausted all the time or stressed to the point where I don’t want to work can’t be a good thing.

I suppose it comes down to a “something’s gotta break” principle. And eventually, something will. Fortunately, I have a pretty darn long way to go before I come to that. It’s not in me to whine and fail. Until I manage to get published, I’ll hold on, work as much as I can and be the best writer I can.

Circle in Spring

I don’t have much to say otherwise. This is just a super quick update sending out Beltane Blessings, especially if you celebrate it as well. If you don’t, just accept the blessing of a good day from me.

Don’t worry, our usual scheduled writing advice and what I have learned posts will be back later this week.

My posts almost always come as a surprise to me. Not because I don’t like doing them but because I tend to forget about them until the last minute. Lets take today as an example. Today, I wasted my day away playing Plants vs Zombies, felt a bit ill and lightheaded (my husband apparently returned the cold I gave him earlier. As Tali’zorah would say… “Totally worth it”), and went out grocery shopping and came home with a ton of fruit.

How much actual writing did I get done today? Not much, I’ll admit. I figured out what I needed to do for my next chapter, wrote a page and a half when I realized I needed to rewrite the first part, and then went to the grocery store. After we got home, I played more Plants vs Zombies and had supper, read about three chapters of Dance with Dragons and then opened up my computer to write.

Unsurprisingly, when I suddenly realized it was 9pm, what did I do?  Well, I didn’t start writing this blog post.

Instead I went to audible.com, checked my bank account, realized I couldn’t buy the next book or two from Patricia Briggs, sulked a little bit, put money into my account and swore to buy them on Monday.

Then I looked at my blank sheet. Looked up at the clock, thought about which project I wanted to work on and then said… “Darn it. Today is Sunday, isn’t it?” Heavy Sigh. “Blog post.”

Like I said, it isn’t that I don’t enjoy doing them. I love getting my thoughts out, even if I don’t usually get discussions on my site. It’s just that blog posts are pretty low on my priority list. Or at least, it comes low on the “write them up in advance” list.

In addition to not actually writing my blog posts until the last minute, I also tend to not decide on what I want to write about until the last minute as well.

If nothing else, it tends to mean that these come across in my natural voice, don’t usually need too much editing and that I think of what I’m up to write when I put my hands to keyboard.

So what does all of this have to do with my writing? Surprisingly a lot. It shows that I’m not as driven as I could be. It also shows that I tend to do not too badly off the cuff but that I would probably do better with planning.

It also shows that I should probably have more self-confidence, even if I’m going into writing without a clue about what I want to write about.

See, this post proves that there is something to be learned from every bit of writing you do… even if it is just a blog post.

Now, on to your regularily scheduled blogpost.

A few years ago when I did Nanowrimo my first year I was already working on a novel about some of me and my friends D&D characters. My husband had convinced me to try my hand at writing and what I wanted to write was the adventure that they were on.

 Perhaps it just seemed safer to me at the time, but in any case, that story was a bust (as I’m sure most first novels are.) I think I’ve said it before on this blog but that novel was missing quite a few things… up to and including plot or an overarching villain. Though technically, you could say that random events and racial arguments against two people falling in love was the antagonist, that doesn’t deny the fact that it didn’t have a villain at all.

 Still the characters sat in my mind, calling to me and urging me to try something unique with them. So after I attempted to edit my manuscript and decided it needed to be rewritten to include all the elements I’d forgotten, I sat down and attempted to plot it out.

 The story changed in major ways. Characters were added, other characters were lost. Connections that hadn’t existed in the game showed up and things that made it D&D fanfic were lost. At the heart, the story was that of a love that crossed race and social class. Still, I wasn’t a good enough writer to finish it.

 Something was missing and I regrettably decided that what I had on my hands was my first trunk novel. A beautiful idea, intriguing characters and an interesting story, but I was still missing parts that would have made it complete.

 I think that everyone who writes a novel makes mistakes that just can’t fix. You just don’t know enough to make it right. You’ll learn but you have to lose that first novel and go on to your next ones.

 I did that – moving on to other books as was appropriate – and spent most of my waking hours learning how to do the things I saw other authors do.

 Still, I never quite moved past those characters. I don’t know how it with other authors but those first characters are still heavy in my mind. They still entrance me and I will always find myself rethinking their stories and how I can fix them.

 What about you? Do you still think about your first? Have you ever returned to it as time when on?

Firstly, today you get an update. Not, unfortunately, on my submission. I still haven’t heard back anything from them. I’m still checking my email with panic every time it tells me I have a message but I’m not really expecting to hear anything until late May/June. No, my update is on my Asus Transformer. If you keep up with the blog you know that it broke down on Wednesday evening.

 On Saturday I took in my computer to the place I bought it, Memory Express. My tablet was past its company warranty but it still had the manufacturer’s warranty.  By the time we got there the unit wouldn’t turn on at all. The guy there was great though and offered to take care of it for me, since they can more easily deal with the company than I can. The gentleman said that I’d most likely have it back in 2-3 weeks (though as usual, it could take up to 8 weeks).

 This leads up to a much happier author. I didn’t realize just how much I’d come to rely on it.

 In other news, I have been working on two short stories and I have another story or so to post. The first one which should be posted in the next day or so (probably Tuesday) is a short story in a world I’m hoping to write in eventually. The second is a short story that’s fanfic, but it needs a little bit more work before I can put it up for you guys.

 I’m doing quite a bit of work on my novel and finding that quite a bit of it requires rewrites. Not that the original was bad, but I’ve grown as an author and I’ve been able to see how/why I was messing up on it. It has been making my editing go by slowly but I am certain that it is making my novel that much better. I’m not rushing the editing process, but I am confident that I should be finished it by late June.

 If I am don’t it in May or early June I have a trunk novel that I may work on during Camp Nanowrimo. I’ve been stuck on it for years but I recently had a breakthrough on it due to a short story prompt for our latest run of Pen Duels (our critique group is given two story prompts and we write one or both and then read them to the group and get a short critique done on them).

 Will any of you be writing or taking part in this year’s Camp Nano? Which month? What will you be writing?

 This is the moment when that girl or guy you were checking out surprises you and you ask them about something personal. That moment when the guy asking for your cash  in front of the 7-11 uses $4 of his hard-earned money to buy his dog food and nothing for himself.

 It’s a really interesting phenomenon and I would suggest everyone look into it and how it is affecting/informing your daily decisions.

 However, that’s what I was going to talk about, not what I am going to talk about. That is due solely to my Asus Transformer. Since I bought it in October of last year, this singular piece of technology has become nearly indispensable to me.

 Doing a bit of writing on the go? Take the tablet. Want to waste 5 minutes? Grab the tablet. Want to listen to some music? Grab the tablet. Want to do some reading? Grab the tablet. Want to quickly do some research on the go? Turn on the tablet. Want to do some GM’ing or even playing in a game? Grab the tablet instead of the dice.

 I took my notes on it for critiques. For my writing group, Pen Duels, I would put the finished product up on it and read it from there. I could carry everything, including some videos and awesome pictures for when I needed something.

 Then today, it broke.

 At the end of my day at work, I turned off the device, packed it into my bag and headed out for my bus. After I got on, I took out the tablet and tried to turn it on. It literally won’t boot past the loading screen.

 So I devoted a few hours to returning to sanity.  I did some house cleaning. I looked into how to fix it. I attempted to fix it myself and failed miserably. Eventually, my husband helped me out by cuddling for a few minutes, got me a warm cover and my gigantic and awesome Android stuffed an animal to cuddle and feel more relaxed holding my comfort toy.

 I’ve send a message to Asus about it and I’ll see what they say. If worse comes to worse, I have some money put away that I can decommission from vacation to tablet repair.  In the meantime, please give me a moment in your thoughts and hope alongside me that I can get it repaired without dropping an arm and a leg to do so.

Sometimes I have to talk about things that have no connection to my writing. Today is one of those days. So, if today is your first time here, I promise that if you come back next time, I’ll talk about writing again.

On Friday, I was reminded that I have pets at home. Not to say that I honestly forgot I had them. More to say that I was suddenly reminded that they are real creatures and that they need my love and attention as much as the people in my life do.

We can often forget while we’re writing that other people are around. To a point, we have a reason. We are spending so much time writing and dealing with those worlds that we start to take the love and affection that we receive in this world for granted.

To make it worse, when we do remember that we have to pay attention to our loved ones, we usually make time for our human companions first. We assume that our pets will be happy cuddling with us but when they try and demand actual time, we tend to get very fed up with them.

We can explain to our friends and family that we’re distracted but our pets really don’t. They understand that we’re distracted, but not why we’re distracted. They assume that like other humans, we’ll come back to them as soon as we’re done. But we’re never done, we’re never finished.

So today is just a very quick reminder that your pets are people to. Spend some time with them. Love them and do them a favour. Turn off your computer for at least two hours every week and play with them or devote it to nothing but paying attention to them. They deserve the same courtesy that we would give our human friends.

And here’s one last picture of my kitten, Minkers. I swear, despite what it looks like, he is NOT smoking weed in this picture. To this day I still don’t know what caused the optical illusion though. He didn’t have anything in his mouth when I took the picture.

This has been a service announcement from your friendly neighborhood animal activist. We will now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Okay, I wasn't quite that bad...

Some days it’s harder than others to get off that couch and get to work. Especially since, due to the necessity of living, my writing is still considered my “hobby” and not my “job”. The last week has been one of those days.

Not that I mean this in a bad way. As is the usual way of things, once you’re down sick with one thing it opens up your immune system to catch every single thing coming down the grapevine. It’s just a fact of life. So this time when I noticed my throat hurting I took a day or two, rested my hand a bit more and kept working.

Unfortunately it didn’t stay in my throat but decided that I should have a fever as well. I find fevers worse than the usual colds since they knock me out. An inherent weakness hits when I get a fever and my body shuts down for a few days. It’s hard to find the energy to do anything more than rest. So this long weekend I rested, though I wrote and worked as well.

Had I not been sick, I would have been a bit depressed with what productivity I had. However since I was sick, I am more than pleased with my work. I edited a short story for my critique group to look over and on Friday I wrote just over 2k to clear up an issue I’d discovered with Chapter 8. I also did a critique for my A Bitch of Writers group and on Sunday night I edited 6 pages of Falling through the Threshold.

I worked through this because in my heart, I know that I am called to write, whether I ever get published or not.

However, being sick again, did give me some time to do a bit of goal setting. From now one, I want to edit at least two and a half pages of my novel, Falling Through the Threshold, every day. So far, I’ve been able to more than keep to that. I wasn’t able to edit on Monday, since I had A Bitch of Writers meeting, but I got finished a preliminary edit on all of chapter 8 (12 pages) done on Tuesday.

Today I finished going through the chapter twice more, to double check my edits and make any changes that needed to be (which normally isn’t needed but today made me rewrite a page and a half to correct a something that wasn’t working and keep the tension up). That chapter is now ready to send out to my A Bitch of Writers group on Monday.

This even leaves me some time to write now! Which is good, since I have a Pen Duels meeting on Saturday that I need a short story for.

One other update before I run off to write. As of today, April 11, 2012, I haven’t heard anything back from the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of Future contest. Supposedly, I should hear back from them sometime around June/July, so no big surprise there. However, I keep checking my phone desperately any time I get an email. I promise that as soon as I hear something, I’ll post about it.

P.S.- Just in case any of you happen to know (or know someone who knows), I’ve been trying to translate some words into Ancient Egyptian or Coptic and have reached nothing but dead ends here. So if you or someone you know would be willing to help me translate a few words, no more than three or four, into either of those languages, please, send me an email or comment below! Such a person would not only gain my eternal respect and gratitude but will also have their name immortalized in the acknowledgements section if/when this novel is eventually published.

Then, of course, the fun comes of posting them and seeing what other people think. I tried to do this to mine, but it was a pain going to page 77 since my chapters are each their own document (to make it worse, some of my scenes within the chapters are still broken up… Yes, I’m that sort of anal-retentitive about organization when I write).

Still it sounded fun, so I went to page 7 of my document.

It was, and at the same time wasn’t, like any other hunt he’d attended.  He took in the details of the scene again, trying to find the discordant note.  The boy hovered on the edge of consciousness but Jarius knew that Melisandre enjoyed playing with her meals.

 Jarius saw that Donald had finally managed to get the girl to the ground.  Holding her, he leaned near, running his tongue over her face.  Xiam shuddered, unable to free herself. 

 Donald stayed close and pulled both of her hands above her head.

I know that every writer out there has a style but may I ask how surprised you guys would be to find out that my lines come a place in my novel where rape is a possibility.  **rolls eyes**

Let me know what you think of the lines as well!