Wow

Wow, it's been quite a while since I wrote anything here. Some of the time, I've just been too busy, sometimes I didn't have anything to say, and lately I've been considering a whole blog redesign/shift to another venue.

Looking around here, though, I think it just needs a thorough housecleaning and maybe some spiffing up. Going to think on it a little and see what we come up with. Stay tuned.

Ending the Hiatus

Yesterday and today I'm working on a new issue of The Scriptorium. It's been "on hiatus" (read, "on my list of things I just couldn't get to") since the November issue. Not really surprising, but I could do better with a little planning. Planning...now that's another whole post.

At any rate, I'm trying out a couple of new ideas to freshen things up, which you really have to do with something that's been going on for eleven years now (!). I'm introducing a new networking option for readers (since our old message board has pretty much died), and working out the details for a new page I'd like to add, featuring some kind of blog feed from writers who blog regularly about writing. I haven't quite figured out the best way to do that yet, so it might have to wait until the March issue.

I'm also losing my columnist, Sue Lick, which is very sad for me. Sue has been a faithful contributor for several years, but she has to turn to other things in her life right now. I'll miss her "Everything But Writing" columns.

But, onward and upward! Time to see if I can get it online today.

The real blog revolution

Today I was thinking about all the really great, funny, interesting, and thought-provoking blog posts I write in my head, but which never actually make it onto my blog.

Recently I've written a rant about misspelled signage and one about being sick of winter, a post about editing, one about geekdom, one about Second Life, and one about raising kids who are readers.

If we ever get to the technological point where I'll be somehow "plugged in" to my blog all the time and will only have to think things to have them appear on the page, I'll be a very prolific blogger indeed.

In the meantime, maybe I'll get to write a few things down sometime soon. *Sigh*

Now What?

Well, that's not actually a serious question. Now that NaNoWriMo, and NaBloPoMo, are over, it's not like I have a dearth of things to do. I have to turn my mind to Christmas, finish preparations for the book launch this week...and I would like to try and keep blogging. I really enjoy it when I'm doing it, but it's an easy habit for me to fall out of.

Tonight I'm going to start a Christmas knitting project--nothing too difficult, it's quite a while since I've done sweaters or anything else really time-consuming. I have a couple of small projects planned, and if they go well we'll see what else I might tackle.

NaNoWriMo was a bit of a struggle this year, but I'm glad I participated, as usual. The story is structurally not good, but I know there are places where, for first draft writing, it's really improved. I saw a big change in my daughter's committment this year as well--she was really engrossed in her story and didn't need nagging or reminding to get those daily words in. It was fun working with her, and with some new NaNoWriMo buds, like my pal Chivalrybean from Second Life who kept me virtual company many writing nights, and others in the SL F&SF Writers Workshop, where we had weekly meetings to keep each other encouraged. As well, my usual supporters, like McDoogle, the AFWD group, and my friends and family had my back for the month. So, thanks, everyone!

I already have plans for a few writing projects to tackle in the new year. I'll keep you posted as they come up.

"Latest" Meme

I am running out of steam on many things right now--NaNoWriMo, book launch preparations, blogging...so today it's a meme again. This one requires some memory work so it could be rough...

Latest Road Trip: 2007 summer vacation to Toronto
Latest Bad Advice: Received or given? Never mind, I can't remember either
Latest Movie I Saw in a Theater: Twilight
Latest TV Show Watched: Kim Possible (?)
Latest TV Show I Enjoyed Watching: Heroes
Latest Book I Tried to Read: can't recall
Latest Thing I Left Home Without: Money to buy my niece a present to take to a birthday party
Latest Take Out Meal: KFC
Latest Celebration: My brother's birthday
Latest Item Loaned Out and Haven’t Gotten Back: Probably a book
Latest New Words Added to Vocabulary: "locus of the points"
Latest New Word of a Foreign Language Learned: attrire (French for attract)
Latest T-Shirt Acquired: Peace & Love graphic from cafepress.com
Latest Package Received: A new bellydance coin belt!
Latest Web Site Visited: http://ocremix.org
Latest Injury: an unexplained bruise
Latest Run In with the Law: n/a
Latest Place I’d Want to Live: I don't know, I pretty much like it here
Latest Physical Fight: I punched a guy once when I was in high school...
Latest Magazine Read: Wired
Latest Thing I Broke: a glass
Latest Thing I Fixed: a wooden rabbit
Latest Thing That Made Me Laugh: A new exclamation coined by my son; "mother catnip!"
Latest Thing That Made Me Go Huh?: my daughter's math homework
Latest Thought: how many more words to get to 50k?

Noveling, Blogging and Bellydancing

Our household is off to a good NaNoWriMo start: we are all on track so far. My daughter and I both woke up early this morning (without alarm clocks) with the idea of writing before the day got too busy. I have about a third of the days' words done.

We also went to our bellydancing class. This is the second class I've taken, and the first for my daughter. We are having so much fun with it! It's just a beginner level class but we are already talking about moving up to the next level once this one is done. Today we learned new choreography, so we'll need to find practice time soon to get it stuck into our heads.

On the blogging front, I think the most difficult part of keeping up with it will be remembering to actually do it. I had a brief panic this morning thinking I'd missed a day already. :)

Now off to a NaNoWriMo meetup. It's snowing just a bit for the first time this season, but I don't expect it to amount to much. Made for a chilly drive to bellydancing class, though.

November looms

Okay, it's...let's see...three days until National Novel Writing Month and National Blog Posting Month. I'll definitely be doing the former; not certain about the latter this year as I have the anthology project still ongoing. Although I suppose that would give me something to blog about.

Not as sure of my footing for this year's novel as I sometimes am, but I'm not going to stress about it. My daughter, son and I are planning an outlining session for our respective projects some night this week, and I hope to come out of that with at least a few details pinned down. And other than a rough idea of the shape of the story, I don't like too detailed an outline, anyway.

I looked last night and now that some of my Second Life writing compatriots are doing NaNoWriMo, my buddies list has thirty names on it! If I can't get enough support to write a measly fifty thousand words, there's something wrong.

Here's to a month of furious creativity!

A month?

Wow, I knew I didn't have time to blog lately, but I can't believe it's been a month! Well, maybe I can. I've certainly been busy.

Mostly with editing. And critiquing. I'm editing stories for the Undercurrents anthology, stories for my writing group, my own work, and articles for a Second Life magazine, of which I'm a junior editor. Also critiquing stories for my online critique group and a couple of outside projects. I'm trying to clear other things away so that I can do a final pass on my novel, but it's hard to get everything else off the list. Maybe I have to re-arrange some priorities.

June is always a busy month with school ending, but the busy-ness seemed to start in May this year, so it's been a hectic couple of months. However, grading day is Friday--hurray! Can't wait to get away from the schedule for a while. And summer has finally arrived here, after a non-existent spring.

The artwork at the top of this post represents the other creative outlet I've had lately--digital space art. It's been fun learning how to create the effects I want, and a great way to unwind after a load of editing. :) I have a small gallery at http://wordsmith101.deviantart.com/gallery/ (check it out and tell me what you like/don't like), and a gallery (A Space for Dreams) in Second Life as well. If you are in SL and would like to visit, the SLurl is http://slurlcom/secondlife/Foxboro/136/178/245.

Maybe I will get back to blogging now. Although I still have a lot on the go, I do feel that some of the pressure has eased.

The Nearest Book to Hand Meme

Well, so far 2008 has been a non-starter for blogging, but perhaps I'll start to feel more motivated soon. Helen has sort-of tagged me to do this meme ("If anyone wants to do this, consider yourself tagged!") so here I am. The rules of this meme are:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the 5th Sentence.

4. Post the next 3 sentences.

5. Tag 5 people.

The nearest book on my desk is The Drawing Bible by Craig Nelson. The thing about this book is that there are precious few sentences on many pages, so these are actually from p. 124, after performing the appropriate counting of sentences on p. 123. Not that it really matters. ;-) This section is called, "Using Visual Landmarks."

Proportion is all about measuring and comparing. When measuring, look for key reference points or visual landmarks on your subject. These may include sharp angle changes such as corners, or distinct tonal changes between shapes such as pieces of clothing.

I bought this book with the intention of starting at the beginning and working my way through every lesson, but I haven't made it terribly far yet. Still on my to-do list, though! It is a very good book.

A late return

Hoo-boy, it's pretty dusty looking around here! Guess it's time to clean up and get back in the blogging groove. I mean, I could do it every day in November, I must have SOMETHING to talk about now that it's a new year.

Besides the cold and the snow and the ice, I hope.

Well, I've been playing around with some watercolor pencils a friend gave me for Christmas, that's a good place to start. I've done a couple of pieces I liked, such as these cherries...



Sigh. Which reminds me, I haven't updated my art blog in a while, either...I guess that's a job for tomorrow.

No Rest for the Weary

Last night I started earnest editing on a novel manuscript that I want to submit somewhere in rather short order. I've done some work on this piece before but it needs a thorough going-over still.

Writing a novel in a month isn't enough for me? I have to keep going? Perhaps I'm out to answer the question, "how many projects can I have on the go at one time?" I don't know.

And I'm still blogging every day. Has it become a habit? Or is it just that I can't shut up...

Journaling, Blogging, and other Writing

Okay, my earlier post about Mermaids was not my final post for NaBloPoMo! I was thinking earlier about writing in various forms.

Journaling, for one. The other night our writing group was discussing journaling and keeping journals. It came to light that much of what was journaled by various members came when they were down or going through a difficult period in their lives. They didn't tend to write as much or as consistently when things were good. I joked that perhaps that was why I've never been good at keeping a journal--I'm too happy. (This does not count the reams of terrible poetry I wrote during high school. I think the stuff I wrote during university had improved somewhat, or at least some of it had. But I digress...)

Back to the journaling, it was only a joke, but it does make a kind of sense, especially when you think of Tolstoy's quote,

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Meaning, I think, that there is a lot more emotional territory to mine for a writer in an unhappy family. Ergo, there's a lot more emotional territory to mine in a journal when times are unhappy.

Blogging, however (while I'm not especially consistent with that, either) seems to broaden the scope of journaling simply because it's a public venue. When we journal, we generally do not have the expectation that it will be widely read. When we blog, we know that many people *may* read it. Thus there's more impetus to make it interesting, to share thoughts we think others might appreciate or understand. The occasional rant or complaint still pops up because we have made this place our personal airing-space, but I think the best blogs offer more than those things. That's why I do better with blogging than I ever did with journaling. Because it's not just about me.

As for writing fiction, I think my feet were really set on that path by my junior high school English teacher, Mr. Patrick Reilly. He made me think that maybe I had something--not necessarily a talent, but an affinity, perhaps?--for storytelling and working with words. And although there have been detours along the way, I'm still on that path many long years later. So he might have had something there. I've just done a quick scan and I see that, not counting works in progress, I've written well over 600,000 words of fiction, poetry and non-fiction since I started writing seriously. I guess perhaps I do have an affinity for words. I sure do seem to like writing them down, at any rate.

A little self-expression...

I was visiting my friend Nancy's blog the other day and it was sporting a shiny new widget that lets one splash paint around a la Jackson Pollock. Here's the masterpiece I created. I rather like it. My first try, I wasn't keen on the colors I was randomly assigned, but this one attracts me.

I won't get into the "is it art?" debate because in essence, the question doesn't much matter to me. I think what matters is that it's personal expression, which is to be valued for its own sake. Goodness knows there are enough people in society whose outlook on life might be vastly improved if they expressed themselves through the arts once in a while. I also tend to try and take a larger view on these issues--is anyone going to care in a thousand years if it was art or not?

Yes, I am rather opinionated lately, aren't I? I'll blame it on the whole posting every day thing. But maybe both self-expression and posting every day are good for the soul.

Why NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo really don't mix

So I figured out what happened last night. I'm in my office doing a write in with my daughter and my sister (none of us are having a very good NaNo thus far). I remembered my post, which I'd written earlier in the day but didn't quite have time to finish and post--looked up at the clock, which says 11:30. Hurriedly I open Blogger, finish the post, and upload it, only to have it show as the 11th. I try re-loading, thinking there's a Blogger problem. No luck. After spending another ten minutes trying to figure it out, I realize--my wall clock is stopped. Argh! Who knows how long it's even been like that? Anyway, then I'm mad that I wasted time trying to fix the problem instead of working on my novel. Double argh! So I just edit it and shut down and give up on everything and go to bed. Sigh. Oh well, in my own mind it was still the 10th, so I'm not beating myself up about it.

FreeRice.com

I know I had an idea for a brilliant blog post this morning...but now that I sit down to write it, I have no idea what it was. Sigh. Maybe it will come back to me overnight, perhaps in a dream.

Instead, I'm going to mention www.freerice.com, a site which launched on October 7, 2007. It works like this:

It's a vocabulary-building game--you're presented with a word and four choices of definitions. For every definition choice you get right, a donation of 10 grains of rice is made through the United Nations food program. The rice is paid for by sponsors who place ads on the site.

Now, ten grains of rice may not sound like very much. However, it builds up quickly. I was up to 900 grains after playing for maybe ten minutes. The site totals are impressive: to yesterday's date, 1,008,771,910 grains of rice had been donated. Yes, that's over one billion.

My only worry is that it will be too successful--that sponsors will pull out if the donations get too high. I hope this won't happen. Innovative ideas like this make me think there's hope for the human race yet.

Procrastination with a purpose--two purposes, in fact. I love it. I
think it's already had an efficacious effect on my vocabulary, too.

"Chew On This" Meme

I'll admit it--I went deliberately looking for a meme to do today. It got kind of funny actually, as I was surfing lists of memes and half of them are out of date or gone altogether...what does this say about the state of memedom on the Internet? But I digress...

I found this interesting meme over at Monday's a Bitch, because well, it is Monday and they're actually up-to-date over there. And I thought a couple of the questions were fun. So...

1. Did you need braces when you were younger?

I may have needed braces, because my bottom teeth are sort of crowded, although not in a really horrible sort of way. However, I don't remember it ever being discussed, and I'm not sure that financially it would have been an option anyway. I don't regret the lack of them, at any rate.

2. If you had to choose between being bitten by a vampire or a werewolf, which would it be?

Now, this is a tough one. I have a deep-seated fear of vampires, likely dating back to some ill-advised vampire-movie-watching when I was in high school, and Stephen King's Salem's Lot. However, the idea of immortality has immense appeal for me. I'd miss the sunlight, of course. As a werewolf, on the other hand, one could conceivably continue to lead a close-to-normal life much of the time, with only occasional lapses into horrible beast-ness. Hmmm...I think the immortality would swing me to the vampire side. Although I'd like to be unconscious when either bite occurs.

3. When was the last time you bit off more than you could chew?

It could quite possibly be this year's NaNoWriMo coupled with NaBloPoMo. I'll have to hold off on that verdict until the end of the month.

4. Have you ever chipped a tooth?

No, I don't believe I have. I had a dentist pull the wrong tooth one time, though. I think it was a perfectly good tooth. Later, another dentist filled and saved the one the first dentist intended to pull.

5. If your smile had a name, what would it be?

This is hard to answer, since I don't know the names of any other smiles for reference.

November is here...

Yes, it's November 1st, the start of National Novel Writing Month (write a 50,000-word novel in November) and also the start of National Blog Posting Month (post to your blog every day in November). Like I haven't got enough to do, I'm going to try both challenges. I've done the novel thing successfully five times now, but I'm notoriously bad at keeping up with my blog. So here we go. Fortunately, doing NaNoWriMo should give me something to talk about in the absence of anything else for NaBloPoMo. Twisted, very twisted.

There's the first blog post done. So far I only have a brief hundred or so words in the prologue of my novel, but I'm hoping things will pick up later.

Bot-a-Blog

For those of you who had subscribed to this blog via Bloglet, I probably don't have to tell you that the service hasn't been working for some time. I've just added a new subscription vehicle, Bot-a-Blog, which should work the same way: you'll get an email when Under The Stars is updated. We'll see how it works out.

The link to sign up is in the left sidebar, just scroll down to find it.