I hope everyone out in LJ-land had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was spent at 3 parties - family, more family, and the bf's family - and by the end I had a lead ball planted firmly in my belly. Today is feeling a bit better, but only a bit.

This morning I opened up the WIP I'd abandoned a few months back because I'd come up with a block and was a bit disappointed with myself: I had ended in the middle of a cool actiony part, *well* before the blocked end of my synopsis! I'm glad I kept my notebook - everything up to That Point is recorded, including the awesomeness that is the scene I stopped at.

I'm not sure what possessed me to end there especially since I had at least another chapter to go. Must have had an attack of drama, it's my only excuse.

At least it's a mistake I can correct easily. I actually relish the opportunity now. :-D

riyirowe has what I consider a good opinion on the annoying knee jerk reactions some people have about books/stories like Twilight/New Moon and Harry Potter, particularly pertaining to Christian viewpoints. The post he's writing about is something my family and their friends would probably send out, and his thoughts on the subject echo mine.

Being raised in a Christian household, it's hard to live up to some family standards. For example, I'd bring fantasy novels home that had monsters on the covers and my parents (being good little Aquarians) would give me guilt trips over them. I've stopped showing all but my tamest stories to my mother despite her protests, since she always wishes I wrote more Biblical stories not such horrible things (admittedly some of my stuff has a darker slant).

People who give kneejerk reactions to monsters, saying the characters are inherently evil just because their literary predessors were, is missing out completely on the redemptive storylines this rich background can create.

.... ..... Meh. Go read the article. He says it much better than me. :-)

In other news, since my home compy is missing its power chords I brought my thumb drive and story notebook to work with me in the hopes of rekindling the writing bug. Just need to find the Butt-In-Chair time first...

I realized this morning that I miss my steampunk WIP. It isn't so much that I miss writing, but I miss seeing what my characters are up to (I guess, in this case, that's one and the same). I picked up Scott Westerfeld's LEVIATHAN and sat down to read it ( I've been waiting so long for it!) but I can't seem to get past the 2nd page. I miss *my* characters, *my* steampunk world - it's almost an ache right now, if that makes any sense.

Went to the midnight showing of New Moon this morning. As ambivalent as I am about the books, I loved Loved LOVED that film!! Everyone seemed much more into their roles, the lovey-dovey was thankfully toned down, and.... okay fine, yes, Taylor Lautner as jailbait wolfboy was HAWT. Yes, I will be seeing it again. I could lay blame for my wanting to pick up writing again on that movie - there were some parts (Jacob begging, Bella standing up while scared to the Volturi, begging Jacob not to draw that line or make her choose) that begged to be written, expanded upon, incorporated somehow into another story. Don't know if they will be but it got me all fired up.

I've been lax in posting here, partly because I got out of the habit but mostly because I stopped writing, and it felt weird to post to a blog about an "eclectic-writer" when I'm not. Suffice to say, I hope all is well with everyone reading this and hopefully I can get back into the habit sooner than later. :-)

It's weird, I do things in spurts. I'll be gung-ho about one thing, then move on to something else. First it was writing, now it's motorcycles. Thing is, I never lose the love for the previous thing (I count learnig fiddle, Swedish, and fire poi among those as well). Still, it's hard for me sometimes to get on LJ and document these things, since I'm never sure if anyone wants to hear about my adventures in Random.

I just got done with my first motorbike roadtrip. 9 days on the road - ambitious for a newbie. Had fun, stayed safe - no writing was done on my books, although I did take lots of pictures and do a ride report.

Nanowrimo is coming up in less than 2 days, which brings me back. I'm not participating this year, but I want to encourage those of you who are. Good luck with everything folks, can't wait to see the word counts!

First California is getting wildfires galore. We should be used to this right? Then I check CNN and see Hurricane Jimena is moving towards Baja California, also towards LA.

I can't help but wonder when the last time Pacific coast of the US had a hurricane hit. Hard to believe they're up to the J's in the Pacific's cyclone season.

Since getting my motorcycle back I've been wanting to make up lost time, but work isn't giving me enough time for any real trips. Next weekend however I'll be at least getting a 2-day weekend so I intend to go jetting around. :-D

.....great, now another hurricane is weighing on my mind. It's not enough that my parents are both down in New Orleans during peak hurricane season, now I have to watch out for my SoCal friends and family...

moschus posted an interesting entry today on the "art of the start". Anyway, she mentions a book by David Allen, Getting Things Done, that helps teach you how to prioritize the needs in your life.

"So if you've got ten things on your mind -- buy cat food, buy a new house, pick up the kids, resolve that fight with your spouse, go to Paris, etcetera -- you've already overloaded it with stuff it feels it needs to concentrate on all at once. Turns out it really sucks at this. When left to its own devices, the mind weighs everything equally, so that buy cat food is just as important as write compelling and socially relevant novel (and no doubt it is, to the cat). You want to work on that love scene, but your mind keeps turning back to Purina Chow, because it's worried that you will forget, and Snowflake will promptly starve to death or take to the streets and join a roving cat gang or something.


When you rely solely on your mind to remind you of these things, your mind takes that responsibility very, very seriously. And if you treat it as a bucket to fill with all those thoughts of tasks that need doing, the mind flits from one thing to the next, trying to remember, remember, remember."

I need that book. Must...find. Any help would be appreciated.

This would be the end of my post except now for the random part: anyone ever heard of Write or Die? I found it in the aforementioned post's comment section - it's a cool little site that motivates you to write how you want through negative reinforcement. I'm sure if they could shock you through your keyboard they'd try. ;) I just completed over 500 words of drivel (steam of consciousness stuff) that I was thinking of posting here but will spare you the torture temptation of gouging your eyes out reading. I find it amusing how the prods you to write, but then again I'm easily amused. ;)

Now must get back to work. *wavies*
(yes, for some odd reason I'm currently very bouncy. Go figure....)

I had an epiphany this weekend while having a Hayao Miyazaki marathon: for my steampunk storyline I plotted to a certain point and couldn't figure out the plot beyond that, but I didn't actually *write* to that point. Yeah, doesn't seem like much but I'm more than a little annoyed with myself, as the act of writing is what motivates me to discover what comes next.

The last month or so has been busy and eventful for me, mostly good things. It's amazing how being away from a computer for a while and getting past the withdrawal symptoms (and there are some) can make it so it's almost difficult to get back online. Hopefully I'm back, and writing, and blogging, and keeping up with you fine folks.

In other random news: I hate it when I do my math wrong. *sigh*

The kind of wedding march I'd LOVE to be part of:


And only because it's wedding themed and with my sister's wedding in less than 2 weeks I'm in that mode, I give you: Thriller Wedding. (ETA: Whoops, double posted the same vid! Fixed now)

Been a long week, nice but exhausting. No writing done but I'm going to get back into that this week.

Have a few things I need to work on with RL. Some things were kind of shown to me this week that, well, made me think.

Tomorrow I start work again after a week vacation - it's going to be tough going back. Anyway, I hope you guys are all having a great week and had a fantastic holiday weekend. *hugs*

Farrah Fawcett dies of cancer.

:-(

There is no defense: I was perusing the files on my little thumb drive to keep from writing. However, in my search for a different story idea I'd come up with a long time ago and wanted to add to (which I can't find, arg, will have to check the ext. HD and hope I didn't erase it when I reformatted my computer), I came across my story from a year or two ago. I'd managed to forget a lot of the backstory I'd woven in and it's once again perked my interest. (This is one I have about 30k written of so far but it had been meandering so much I'd given it up and moved on with Life. I'd also read somewhere that people being whisked to another land was overdone in the genre and *cough* there may possibly, just a teensy bit, be some of that going on here...)

Whatever, now to pick a scene in my current/main WIP and add to it. The one good thing about writing out of order: you can pick and choose which part you feel in the mood for at any particular moment. ;-)

ETA: Okay so the day wasn't a total loss. I managed to get over 1k words between 2-3 scenes. Everything's spread out so no clue how much my total is so far but I'll compile it all together this weekend for a "grand" total. A little here, a little there - odd but it keeps me writing.

So far, today has been a bust. I've been having a lot of these lately, where I get home and take a long friggin' nap and thereby take up my entire afternoon with the blissful release of sleep. Now I just spent almost an hour catching up with my flist and am now determined to do some writing.

As soon as I get something to eat. And food for my dog. And wow, my kitchen is a mess, maybe I should clean it up. And scrub the toilet, polish the floors, do my laundry, box up books for library donation, organized my DVD/video game pile, put up the pictures...

*sigh*

Or just eat and write. Yup, sounds good to me.
(procrastination, thy name is "Sarah")

I doubt I'm the only one who's creeped out by Edward Cullen, although after watching the Buffy/Edward Youtube vid circling the flists I have to say the creep factor (based heavily on the EGADS!ness of Robert Pattinson so NOT being pretty) has gone up several notches.

However, I loved this article a girl on Facebook just posted: Ten Ways Twilight Has Ruined A Generation of High School Girlfriends. LOLing here folks, too true!

Yesterday, while not by any means a bust, was a no-write day. Spent the entire afternoon with the boyo and his family as they helped me comb out some of my dreadlocks. They were expecting it to be easy - guess I showed them. *sigh* Still have a little under half of my head to do, hopefully it'll get done sooner than later. I want my hair back, dangit! Already looking up good conditioners to fix my damaged hair but don't want to make any appointments with hairdressers yet as it's not done and I don't know when it will be.

Question for anyone out there who love gadgets as much as I do: what's a good ebook reader? For the last week or so I've been seriously considering getting a Kindle; I'm not sure I can spring for $400 but it can be a goal (along with a new Macbook, paying down my bills, an iPod Touch or iPhone, etc - yeah...) for the future. I'm worried though if I get a Kindle I'll come across the same problem I have with my iPod in that I have a ton of files that aren't universal. Annoyance much? Still, they're a lot smaller and easier to pack than a bunch of books, and, well, I love gadgets.

Any ideas? I know NADA about the ereader business (or the epublishing biz) but would love to see if it's for me (by spending money out my @ss, yeah I know). :)

via dragonmyst:

On Friday, Pennsylvania Senator John Eichelberger, who is sponsoring a bill to ban same-sex marriage in the state, held a radio debate with Senator Daylin Leach, who is sponsoring a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in the state. In the interview, Eichelberger said there's no reason to allow gay couples to marry and said that they're not being punished. In fact, he lauds the fact that gay couples are allowed to exist.

Huh? No wait, I mean

HUH!?

Dear God in heaven what the EVERLOVING FUCK is up with those words? *can barely type from angry shaking* I mean, GOD WHAT THE FUCK!

... ... ... Fuck! I don't know what to say to stupidity like that!!!

*sad sigh* RIP Neda Soltan, the world will not forget.

I'm finding my process with this latest book of mine interesting. It was/is an experiment anyway; writing scenes completely out of order is kind of odd and new and, well, mostly odd. I have a plot and some direction, but it's as jumbled in my head as it's becoming on "paper".

My latest worry isn't the plot but the subplots - namely any romantic ones. I have ideas but although I have two (maybe three) male romantic possibilities, even *I* can't decide who gets the girl. The more I think about it, the less I want to have to. The biggest arc is definitely my MC's internal one, based on a decision made before the book even started. The way things are going now, I think I'm going to write out the main plotline then one at a time add the sbplots in during revisions.

Anyway, I'm off to write out another scene that's been in my had for a while. Short and sweet probably - it should be fun to write all the connectng bits at a later time during the first pass of revisions (or second pass of writing the initial draft). This thing is like a patchwork quilt, pieces all over that may eventually make up a whole if I cut and sew them together right. It's an experiment and I hope it works. Only one way to find out...

ETA: Woohoo, metrics!

YAUF
Daily word count: 1,179

So far my biggest day on this WIP. A respectable word count in my opinion. :-)

Over the last two days there has been a lot made about the happy-happy-joy postings of writers, and how this apparently is "bragging" or "boastful" because these people don't also portray the downsides of writing. Several people on my flist now, writers who are among my favorite blogs and seem like people I'd *totally* dig if we met in real life, seem subdued and apologetic now for being happy.

W.T.F?!!

My flist is filled with writers. It's a pretty tight community and that fact is gratifying. I love it when authors allow themselves to have an online presence - it makes the books they write or the successes they have all the more special. It's hard work balancing both professionality and approachability - some are such awesome pros about it and some descend into epic fail. However, as writers we all understand one main thing:

Writing sucks.

It's not easy. Frankly, for many of us it's more of a struggle than most day jobs we've had. Unworkable plots, low attention spans, kids screaming for attention, boss screaming for such-and-such: the fact we can get a word in edgewise, let alone a word on paper, can be a miracle in and of itself.

Often, the only consolation we have, the thing that keeps us going when we can't see any light at the end of this particular tunnel, is the goal of publication. Or of landing an agent. Or, omg, of actually just *finishing* a book! We know the bad shit already, why do we need to be told more?

So don't make my friends feel bad because they only post about the good stuff. They are not gloating, they are not being vain or waving their pretty pink-and-scented-rose publishing contract in our faces. They are helping those of us still in that tunnel to see that, yes, there is a light, despite the overwhelming darkness we see. The tunnel will end, perseverence and hard work pay off, and *this* is what you have to look forward to. They don't dangle the carrot in front of our faces, they give us the stamina to go get it ourselves.

For that, I so *totally* heart my flisters.

Spent last evening after the wedding hanging out with a friend and her husband (who I hadn't before met, totally love the guy) before starting home. The road was blurring a bit (it was after all 1am) so I spent my night taking a nap at a rest area before making my way back home. Now that the dog is watered, fed and walked I'm eager to work on my WIP...only to realize I left my journal for the book at work. *cue faceplant* I've got most of it in my head anyway, but still, urgh.

Grocery shopping is high on my list, as well as laundery and perhaps a bit of picking up around the apartment. Between watching the boy work on my motorcycle and writing, I haven't given myself enough time to give this place the thorough cleaning it needs. Sadly enough I'm really contemplating having a maid come in to do it because I always seem to get distracted and *forget* to finish my chores. No wonder my mother sometimes felt like pulling her hair out when I was a kid. ;-)

I'm right now attending my best friend's wedding, which I drove 3hrs to see (totally worth the trip). Haven't seen him in way too long and now he's moving to Indiana. Bummer...

Today at work I managed 505 words, which isn't what I'd like to end up with but may since I don't have either my journal or USB drive.

It's really awesome here right now. He used to be my best friend - we've grown apart over the last couple years (mostly because we lived so far apart) but it's so cool to see him married and to such a sweet girl. I'm tickled pink for him, well and truly.

Looks like the music is about to start up so time to party it up. :-) I love weddings, especially the fun ones with those I love!