Words Are Hard

48,783 words, and I'm stuck like a truck in the mud (couldn't help the simile...I'm listening to Cruise by Florida Georgia Line). Possibly it's because I'm tired. Also, quite possibly, I've run the story to the ground. That happens too often to be fun, and I may have to take a whole bunch out.

Yay.

Making enormous cuts is quite easily my least favorite part of writing, along with revising. Actually, revising wouldn't be bad if I could get my changes typed up quickly (I usually revise by hand first and then type it up, which is the boring, time-consuming part. Maybe I need a better method). Anyway, big cuts always suck, unless you're making paper snowflakes. Only time they're good. Otherwise you're losing words, money, blood, accuracy, whatever. Not good. They make me sad in my writing. I worked hard for those words!

Speaking of which, my sister is home for Thanksgiving break. Whenever any of my family struggles with saying something (stuttering over sentences, mashing them up, etc...stuff you do in any normal conversation) she pops in with "Words are hard" to tease you. I thought it appropriate for the context.

Writer's block? Faugh. More like a massive brainfart. With all that food I ate for Thanksgiving, it's not surprising. The gas bubbles just went up instead of down.

Miscellaneous Quotes and Cartoons

Writing Update

Since NaNoWriMo started, I've written 11,549 words in my novel (currently titled SG2, or Shadowguard 2. Someday I'll come up with something, but not now. I want to find the perfect name, though I do have ideas. Perhaps I'll list them here). That's equal to about 2.5 chapters and 20 pages. I'm on a roll!

Here's my novel page. I think you can access it through this link.

And My Vote Goes to...NaNoWriMo!

A little tired of all the political bullpoop? I know I am. I voted last week (absentee, you know), so I've been ready to hear the end of it since then.

I wish to make one comment before dropping the political subject completely: Washingtonians, I am proud of you! Thank you for approving R74, because what matters isn't who you love, it's that you love. Also, a shout out to Maryland and Maine. Keep it up America!

On another note, November continues on. As many of us know (and probably are showing), it is No-Shave November. As a female, I can't say that I participate in that. However, I am starting to see the perpetual five o'clock shadows getting scruffier and scruffier. At some point, it gets a bit ridiculous, but we'll deal with that later.

The other November tradition, NaNoWriMo, has more stock in this blog, as I am more or less "participating" (notice the double qualification). In recognition of the fact that it is, in fact, National Novel Writing Month, I have been writing every single day, even if I won't make the goal of 10,000 words. Which is fine, since my novel already has 36,000-ish. Even if I'm only writing a sentence a day, that's okay. The point is simply to spend my evenings doing something I love, to relax, and to celebrate writing in its fullest! I don't drink to it, I don't shout out to the world (except in this blog, which is in itself writing as well). Instead, I celebrate by doing. I don't do this for everything, and I wish I did.

One last November "tradition"--aka HOLIDAY. Thanksgiving! What's not to love about tons of yummy food, spending the day cooking with family, and the four day weekend? I am thankful that I have a job I love, that I am more or less financially stable in this economy, and I am particularly thankful to have Black Friday off, since at my work that is a fought-for day. What are you thankful for?

On Any Giving Day

I'm not joking, this is an actual text conversation I had with a girl who randomly called me (which I didn't answer) and then began texting me. It makes me sad for the state of the world.

All I can say is that I'm glad it wasn't a truly giving day! Like Thanksgiving. MAN, I would have been severely outspelled...

If I Had a Million Dollars, I'd be Rich

The Barenaked Ladies had it absolutely right. They would buy love with their million dollars. What would you buy?

Me? Well, my dad posed the question to me once or twice (actually we may discuss it fairly frequently). My answer was easy, and I didn't think about it for a second: I told him I'd buy books with all my money.

Now, that's an interesting prospect: a million dollars worth of books. I didn't think farther into my lovely fantasy than that. Who would want to? But my dad, being an engineer, of course decided to pick it apart, and asked me if I could read that many books.

Good question. So, here I am putting a million dollars into a reader's perspective.

Let us say that for convenient purposes, I buy books on average at 10 dollars per book (taking into account that most paperbacks cost about 8 and most hardcovers are close to 20, but I tend to buy more paperback or Kindle versions). With my million dollars, I could buy 100,000 books. Excellent.

Now, let us imagine that I read an average of 3 books every 24 hours. If I don't take into account the need to sleep, eat, work, have any kind of social life, etc., then it would take me 33,333.33 days to read them all. That is approximately 91 years, at which point I'll be so old and decrepit (and quite likely dead) that in fact, it is NOT possible to read that many books in a lifetime.

If I were a nice, sparkly vegetarian vampire, on the other hand, I think I might manage it.

On another note (yet it's still related to reading, go figure), my literary love life is going well. I finished a book called Something Strange and Deadly today, started, and finished, a book called The Space Between, and I'm about to start reading a Kindle sample of Lord of the Fading Lands. I also have eight books checked out from KCLS, and fifteen more on hold. I may not like how King County spends its tax dollars, but I do quite enjoy the inter-library loans!

For the first book I read, I didn't like it much. It was worth reading, but not worth buying. The characters fell flat for me (and holy CRAP I hope that never happens in one of my books...that's just about the worst thing I can think of, besides stupid, useless love triangles and cliffhangers) and the love story was just...unbelievable. And I mean that in the sense that it didn't seem realistic.

Anywhoodles, the second (The Space Between) was a totally worthwhile read. I'd give it a nine out of ten stars, and honestly I can't pinpoint exactly why I didn't give it a full ten, but I know there was a reason. I generally trust my literary instincts. I'll edit this post when I think of it (if I ever actually do).

An update on my current writing status: Still editing chapter two of book one (I've progressed about a page since I last picked it up). Why is revising so difficult? I'm at about 36,000 words for book two. Progress there, at least. Yay!

I won't be writing any more tonight though. For now, it's time to begin reading again!

Rain is capricious, drivers are impatient, and JK Rowling is a champ

She is. How she managed to keep a full-time job, be a full-time mom, and write an international bestseller is beyond me. As soon as I started my own job, suddenly my time petered out and all I'm left with is a couple hours a day to contemplate writing...at which point i'm usually too brain dead to start. I've determined that Veronica Rossi had the right of it: write it all on your phone during your commute.

Problem with that is that I spend 2.5 hours a day driving to and from work. No chance to write then, unless I manage to get my voice-to-text application to work. Imagine all that time writing, going to waste!

Which brings me to my second point. I heard on the radio a while ago that Seattle drivers are the worst drivers in the US, according to studies. They don't let people in to change lanes, they tailgate, and they lay on their horns for the merest slight. I'm inclined to believe that that's true, except for Bellevue and Issaquah. I can't even count the number of times I'm cut off every day.

Not to mention the fact that no one seems capable of driving in the rain, despite being in Washington, the Land of Perpetual Wet. It can't decide if it's going to rain heavily, drizzle, or simply not rain at all and threaten it instead. I change my wiper speed about fifty times an hour.

And don't even think about driving in the snow. Seattle just shuts down. Probably for the best...

On another note, tomorrow marks the beginning of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. While I will not be beginning a new novel for the "contest", you can safely bet that I will spend much of my time writing. I plan to take less time with the sequel to the Shadowguard than I did in writing it in the first place.

A Poem, Made Up On The Spot

I'm sitting on the couch, writing for the first time in about a month, and I'm starving. Somehow I can't convince myself to get up though, as I'm sustaining myself on literature. I was staring at the page though, and the first verse in this poem popped into my head, which I then proceeded to make up on the spot (and, of course, post to facebook, because what else do we do with stuff like that these days?). Anyway, here it is.

Home alone with nothing to do. Searching in vain for something to chew.
My stomach growls loud and clear, but I'm too lazy to feed it I fear.
For making dinner requires work, and that is a duty I'm willing to shirk.
But still, I may need to get up soon, 'cuz otherwise I may just swoon.
A lack of food is no small thing, especially when you are STARVING.

*Bows* Thank you, thank you.

The Best Part of Waking Up

Is soldiers in your cup!

Runny nose, gritty eyes, work in a few, how to survive? When not even the coffee can revive?

Ok, as far as rhymes go, that was pretty much terrible. Not pretty much. It just was. But I think we can all agree that I'm obviously not at my best in the morning.

And, I've made a sad, sad discovery today. The last time I stayed up until 5am with a book was when I got my hands on Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince--incidentally, at 1am (I stayed up for the midnight release, of course. Who didn't?). Unfortunately, that time in my life when I can survive such a dramatic gesture from my love of books has come and gone. Apparently I can't survive the aftermath.

I feel old. I even found a gray hair the other day. No joke.

You see, I have a problem: it's an addiction to books, which means that once I start one that's hooked me, it's nearly impossible for me to put it down. Something really terrible (such as a love triangle) has to happen for me to stop reading. In this case, it was two books. The first, Angelfall, was actually an indie book (which I usually avoid). I really enjoyed it. The problem was that afterward, I was left feeling bereft of a good story (always happens, don't know why it hit me so bad. Possibly because it was midnight). So I started Anna Dressed in Blood. A chilling ghost story if I've ever read one.

I really shouldn't read such scary stories after midnight. My poor health can't take it. It's exceedingly possible that this is where I get my gray hairs from.

On another note, fall has finally arrived, and with it, a nice bite to the air (can't resist a good metaphor, even if it's cliche). It's in the low fifties, sunny, and with a chilly wind. My favorite kind of weather! If only the trees were orange, it would be perfect.

And, as much as I love this kind of weather, it means good-bye to the corn. The spring planting didn't do so well with our lovely, wet spring (wet even for Washington, which is saying something), so the corn was stunted in its growth. It is doubtful that it will come to full fruition before the first frost. One can hope.

For now, I shall let the coffee do its trick (I have high hopes for its effectiveness). Now that I've satiated my reading craving, it's possible I'll actually be able to get some editing done. We shall see.

In Which I Write About Writing

Today, I was very productive, though not in the way I should have been. I'm taking the GRE this Saturday, and therefore should be studying (I got all questions but half of one right for the verbal reasoning section and all questions but five wrong for the quantitative [math] section in my diagnostic test...you can see where I need the work). However, I was feeling a bit of inspiration last night after writing chapter two of the sequel to The Shadowguard (a title my brother heartily made fun of), so I spent all day working on world building and character backstories.

I now have enough information that I'm not including in the stories that I could probably put together a companion! Not that I'm going to--it's unnecessary for readers, though highly necessary for me. At least, I'd hope so. My hope is that the characters and story will be able to make it clear, though I am of course not the right person to judge whether or not that is true.

So, now, I have the ancient history of the continent (which doesn't have a name, as yet...I simply call it "the island continent", though I should really fix that...), the backgrounds of each important character (and some not-important characters), the first chapter and a half of the second book, and I've created a storyboard for the whole book, so I'm not writing blind like I was with the first. Initially, I wanted to name the book Shades of Gray (or possibly the series), but that was before Fifty Shades of Gray came out. You can bet I scrapped that title in a second! It's not something I want my books associated with. So now I'm brainstorming ideas for that as well.

This time, my editing hopefully won't take quite as long, as I won't have to go back and delete characters or change the plot (since my entire story changed by the end of the book). When I ran out of ideas, I went for a walk through my garden or played with my dogs. It was genius. Don't know why I haven't done this before.

Time to type up and print out my storyboard! Writing to commence almost immediately, and I shall resume editing as soon as I get stuck (which will probably be soon).

Also, I want to say thanks to my BFR's for braving the horrid syntax and plot holes!