MEET & GREET!

Questions for the Meet and Greet

-Where do you write?

Usually in the office (lucky to have an office), sometimes on the porch and sometimes late at night in bed.

-Quick. Go to your writing space, sit down and look to your left. What is the first thing you see?

A pile! Encyclopedia of the Strange, Mystical, & Unexplained (Rosemary Ellen Guiley), my book bible (three ring binder filled with names, myths, inventions, and what-ifs),  Steampunk Bible (Jeff VanderMeer), a journal, and a composition notebook. It's a good pile of stuff. 

-Favorite time to write?

Either early in the morning or late at night. But anytime I can carve out is my favorite.

-Drink of choice while writing?

Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee. Unless it's late at night then a glass of red wine is nice -- and helps quiet the editor!

-When writing , do you listen to music or do you need complete silence?

I like to gear up for writing with music -- I like to find my own soundtrack for the book I'm working on, but I want quiet while I'm actually writing. Now, brainstorming to music is great.

-What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it?

It was a long route...but my own pre-teen years and the movie Thor.

I had finished the first(ish) draft of a Contemporary YA -- and was having a hard time with one of the heroes, as in: What is he? What's the mythology? Etc. And, because I like to make things difficult for myself -- or I can't face the difficulties -- I thought, why don't I plop this in the 1800s and instead of a parapsychology center(which I really lived in for a while as a kid) I'll make it a school for "exceptional" kids...and, hey, what if myth and legend were actual history...

So, it ended up being it's own story -- nothing made it from the original YA (which is good, still need to figure that one out) 

-What's your most valuable writing tip?

Writing leads to ideas, ideas lead to more writing (a tip I often forget!). And use a beat sheet! Blake Snyder or Alexandra Sokolloff -- it's like a WIP GPS.

Excited to meet people!

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOULD BE WRITING WRITER

If confessions are good for the soul, then I'm golden. I can only hope they're good for the Muse's soul as well.

I haven't been writing.

Seriously not writing. Like, doing laundry instead of writing not writing. 

Okay, (another confession) I've done some creative things, because my brain will explode into a ball of dust if I don't create something, yet even these things started to feel like resistance (no matter how cool), because I have written and created other things too -- sometimes, nearly simultaneously! But this was instead of writing.

I'd like to blame it on WRITER'S BLOCK but that wouldn't be true. I didn't know what it was, I'd nearly come up with an idea for what needed to be written next (I do have a rough outline -- I know the ending, I know BIG key points) and it wouldn't work for me.

I had Writer's Indifference. (I just came up with that term!)

And then, and then it hit me. I had too much going on. Too much! Too much para in the normal, too much story in the line, too much, too much, too much. And the stupid thing is, I thought this one was golden: perfect conflict, perfect character arc, perfect plot. I was wrong.

Last night (late, because, why would an epiphany come early) I realized I had started this book last year and it coincided with Deana Barnhart's Gearing Up to Get an Agent (an awesomely fun thing) which is, again, happening soon, and what lead to the epiphany -- because I'm still writing the darn thing! -- suddenly it hit me: mine's broken.

Okay -- maybe not broken, but it certainly needs fixing. And, I think that's why I wasn't writing -- I couldn't see what was wrong, because there were so many things going on, I couldn't see that there were so many things going on! Now, the main story remains the same -- girl wants revenge for her parents' death. I just need to brainstorm how far I should take the paranormal aspect.

I can do this. So, while I will definitely be Gearing Up to Get an Agent,  I will be concentrating on finishing my manuscript. I'm giving myself until the end of the year (seems kind of long -- I really want to shorten it, but I'm not). December 31st 2012. That is it.

P.S. Next post I'll show you what I did instead of writing.

What do you do instead of writing?

ROW80/Red Door(!) Check-In

Aack, I'm late! Probably because I did a dismal job on my writing goals:
1,417 words added. I guess it's not horrible...not horrible is okay.

Still reading both craft books.

Finished painting the entire back of the house -- porch and everything. At one point I was almost in tears -- transitioning from high ladder to porch roof...gah! I don't mind the roof, especially ours, with a nice little pitch -- I was on a high ladder all day and I think my adrenaline got the better of me.

Extra added bonus of a shiny newly painted door -- red! I have always always always wanted a red front door.

But nothing else is painted on the front of the house yet.

I go back to work tomorrow, plan on stocking-up on all the research books I need. Which gets me more excited than I can tell you.

How's everyone else doing?

ROW80 Check-In the Second

Feeling pretty positive about my goals.
Pages/Words: 
Added 2581 words to my first draft (150 pages goal -- knocked off 10+ pages). woot!


Craft Reading:
The War of Art (have been for the last month  (I read and re-read and re-read) by Steven Pressfield. Pressfield is lyrical and persistent. He continually opens my eyes to Resistance.
The War of Art

250 Things You Should Know About Writing by, Chuck Wendig.
Chuck Wendig writes in your face, laugh out loud, reallyreallyreally no holds barred stuff we all need to hear, or read.
 250 Things You Should Know About Writing
Here's a sampling of one of the categories:
25 Things You Should Know About... Writing a Novel
1. Your First And Most Important Goal Is To Finish The Shit That You Started
{{{One of my favorite lines (because I'm so freaking guilty of it:}}}
Your hard drive is not a novel burial ground. {{Okay, two lines}} It's like building your own Frankenstein monster -- robbing a grave, stealing a brain, chopping up a body -- and then giving up before you let lightning tickle that sonofabitch to life.
A link to Chuck Wendig's blog: Terrible Minds

That's about it for now. Hope everyone is doing great.

ROW80, My Goals, My Plan, My List

Driving home from work the other day, I saw a bumper sticker that read:

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Wow. Um, you mean all those goals of losing 10 pounds and writing more were just wishes? No wonder they didn't come true. Except, when I actually had a set plan of writing so many pages a day, or running a mile three days a week.

Plans are good, lists are good -- I love lists, I can write lists all day -- love checking off items from the list, love seeing what's left on the list. So, here's my goals, my plan, my list:

Goals:
Finish First Draft of GODDESS IN THE MECHANICA
by writing150 pages by September 19th

Write 14 posts for Those Kennedy Women
(convince co-bloggers to do the same) complete by August 1st
Blog grand re-opening by September 1st

Plan:
Write 2 pages a day, every day
by planning out the scene before I write it


Meet with Mom and Sister 2nd or 3rd week in July
Brainstorm ideas for blog posts.
Write 3 posts a week in July


List:
Research late 1800s in Minnesota
Research/invent cool Steampunkish gadgetry
Research Alchemy
Research Nordic, Greek and Irish Mythology
Read craft books


Read lifestyle books
Visit other lifestyle blogs
Take pictures of every house/craft/garden project I undertake


Unrelated to writing goals:
Re-stain porch railing, base around screens and stairs
Paint exterior trim
Paint exterior house


 Phew. Here's to plans and lists and I'm reallyreally happy to back in the saddle again! Can't wait to see how everyone else is doing!

VIVA LE RESISTANCE! Er, PERSISTENCE! Yeah, that's right..

So a group of us are starting a Fast Draft session starting... Now! Jenny Hansen started the ball rolling and I am 100% committed to this thing. Just as soon as I can fight through all this underhanded sneaky resistance. I am home sick, like, can't talk sick, tired, sore throat, coughing sick. I could have been lounging all morning writing, but I noticed the dog had dropped clumps-o-hair, so I vacuumed.

Then I realized dirty baseball uniforms

needed to be washed...along with towels and unmentionables etc., etc., etc.

Now, I'm exhausted, and I can hear "resistance" chuckling. Chuckling I tell you. So, I thought I'd write about the damn thing and hopefully exorcise it: Out evil editor and saboteur and maker of doing dreaded housework, when I could totally get away with doing none! BE GONE! No really.

Steven Pressfield wrote a book to save us all, called: The War of Art

I know, in your brain, you're going, no she's wrong, it's called The Art of War, and was written like a bajillion years ago. Yes, but Steven Pressfield has made a lovely play on words with his title and a valid point:

Sometimes producing art feels like war.

Only in that you have to battle yourself and your well-meaning -- or not so much so -- loved ones.

So, if you've never done Candace Havens' Fast Draft or even heard about it. Check it out. Plus, read The War of Art, it will change something inside of you -- but the trick is to keep the change.

I think I've tucked-in resistance for a nap, and I'm off to write.

How does resistance rear its bulbous head in your life, and can you beat it into submission? Tell me how you do it.

MY "GIRLS IN THE BASEMENT" *

* I first heard this term from Jennifer Cruise, a long time ago, but here's a cool video current video link


So this has to do with my personal "girls" in the basement, the subconscious trio of story idea mongers -- I can see them and I want to share them with you:

None of which are what I see in my mind, but they come close

The top pic is clearly the bad-ass, I am not a bad-ass, yet, sometimes I wish I were, also, my writing NEEDS a bad-ass, to get things done, no matter the cost. Also someone to blow things up. She likes it when things blow-up.

The second pic is the thinker, she too helps in getting things done, she views the carnage of things gone horribly wrong...and figures out how to move the story forward in between "things getting worse-er."

The third is my dreamer, listening to her own voices and taking leaps of faith and coming up with implausible plots in story-land. Preferably without explosions.

When I stay out of their way, cool type things happen, the story moves forward, things explode, surprises are revealed, characters pop up -- the Master of Swords? Who the hell is this and what does she do? She?... See what I mean?

My foible is refusing to give up total control. I over-think to the point of Not Writing Anything.

Nothing.

If I could get out of my own way and let the girls rule for even a tiny bit, I think I could get so much more written.

I took Candace Havens Fast Draft workshop a few years ago... I have never, ever, everer, written so much in so little time as then. Why didn't I continue to use it? It scared me. No control, I mean things, words, sentences, plot twists came out of my fingertips (certainly not my brain) from nowhere. It was scary.

Which is why I need to try doing it that way again. Just let the girls drive.

What stops you from getting things done? And who are your girls?