"Twentysomething"

like a bird on the wire

2012-01-23T06:50:00.000-05:00

It's funny how you can learn important lessons from the most trifling things.

Evan and I have been watching the show Sons of Anarchy for the past two weeks. We're halfway through the third of four seasons right now, and last night I started putting together some pieces in my life.

One of the show's main themes is recognizing what is most important to you and then doing anything you have to do to maintain it, achieve it, protect it--whatever. And these characters willingly put themselves through hell, throw themselves into gun fire, sacrifice their lives to keep that one thing sacred and to keep it going for the others who care.

I started writing books when I was 9 years old. It was the thing I did above all else, the thing that lurked in the back of my head at all times, the thing I would do after dinner: lock myself in my bedroom scribbling in notebooks. I wrote through puberty, through high school, through the turmoil of college, and through my early twenties up to where you know me now, on the precipice of 26. Almost two-thirds of my life, devoted to writing. The older I get, the dimmer my memory, I'll only remember that I was always writing, always thinking about writing.

And yes, during all that time I always had the far-off thought that one day I'd like to see my name in print. But first, I needed to do this with my writing, and I needed to improve my dialogue, or strengthen my word choices. Always something. As long as I was still writing, still coming up with stories, I was happy. I am happy.

Then I started blogging. And I saw how many people wanted to be published. And I asked myself if there was something wrong with me, that I didn't really think about being published--just writing. Did that make me less passionate? Did it make me a coward, because I hadn't thought about being published yet because I felt like I still needed to improve before I tried to put myself out there, still needed to write a better story, with better characters and better plot and better everything. Was I a coward?

Things started to change. I started finishing novels instead of just starting them. I saw massive improvements in my craft, felt them in my planning process. Saw maturity emerging in my words. So then I thought, yes. I can do this. I am close. I am ready. No more fear: just desire to make myself presentable, to make my words sing, to make them the best I am able.

When I finished my most recent book, I thought: this is the one. I'm going to shine it up and send it out. I'm going to be querying by April, at latest. I'm finally going to do it.

And I thought about that constantly. I thought about the drive to publish, I imagined writing query letters, getting the call, telling my husband that I had a book deal. Fantasy overrode reality.

In nursing school, nearly any student you talk to will tell you that s/he (but mostly she) is going into nursing because of her passion. She feels called to be a healer, to be this profession that is more than just a profession. They all walk around with this enormous depth of drive and well of desire that keeps them going when the cards are stacked against us. When the knowledge seems crushing and the skills are overwhelming and there are three tests around every corner, and everything is pass or fail--they have their passion.

And me? Nursing isn't my passion--I already have my passion, have had my passion since I was nine years old. The thought constantly presses against me: what am I doing in this field where passion is queen, with my passion at home in old notebooks and on hard drives?

This thought was truly giving me a crisis last semester. I finally overcame it by remembering that I will always need a day job, and I chose nursing through the sum of its parts--not the title first. I managed my time a little better so I could write a few days a week, and all the crisis went away.

But then I got the new bug, the publish bug. The query bug. And suddenly nursing school was in the way again. Last semester is a joke compared to this one. I'm learning skills that are honest-to-god life and death, medication administration, starting IV lines, inserting Foley catheters, learning everything I need to know about all the medications I will use in my practice.

In only two weeks, the crisis was starting again.

And then we started watching Sons of Anarchy, and I saw these characters who said: yes, I will go to prison for this thing I did. I won't be in there forever, but I will serve my time as long as I must, and when I get out, things will be back to normal. My passion has been saved because of this sacrifice, and I will live to fight for that passion for many more days.

The understanding started pawing at me pretty quickly, but it wasn't until yesterday that I let myself look at it and feel it and acknowledge it.

Writing isn't the only passion in my life--it's just my doing passion, if that makes sense. It's the thing I'd rather do instead of play video games or play the guitar or paint or photography. I also have passion for learning and knowledge. I crave knowledge. I savor every scrap of new information that I learn and I horde it. It's like those old ESPN commercials: "my knowledge...is greater than your knowledge!"

And most of all, I have a passion for my husband and for our life. Getting into nursing school was a year-long process. School itself is a two-year process. I make a pittance with my day job: he's our real bread-winner. He's the one who's said, "yes--I will put my own soul-searching on hold because I want you to do this, to find yourself through this new adventure." For that, I owe him everything. I owe him my full attention on school, I owe him paying attention to the other elements of my life that can give me happiness besides spending 8 hours a day in front of my manuscript. I can "go to prison" for just one more year, because when I get out, everything will still be here. I will still love to write. I will be a year older, and I will have read hundreds more books that will inspire me and teach me and improve my craft. I will have done my best at what I'm doing, and I won't live with the lingering guilt of I could have done better, if I'd tried harder.

I'm not saying I'm not going to write. I'm saying that the publish bug has been put into stasis. It was a foolish thing for me to obsess about the end, and not the means. I still want to revise and edit my manuscript, but I'm no longer holding up arbitrary words for it like "April" or "by the summer."

I guess passion is meant to burn bright and consume us. I'm not blowing out the flame, I'm just trimming the wick so my other candles can also contribute to the light of my path.

The 5th Time's the Charm? (and other steps in the right direction)

2012-01-09T06:45:00.000-05:00

For those of you who follow me on Twitter or are my Facebook friends (you poor lot), this will be old news. In fact, you're probably sick of hearing about it by now, but bear with me just a little longer.

Last Friday, January the 6th, I finished my fifth novel.
As my last post hinted at, this novel has by no means taken the usual route. In writing, as in all things, I am a slow and steady pace-r. However, I'm living in uncertain times, and uncertain times often call for drastic measures.

I finished my last novel in April last year and didn't really work on anything else. We'd just bought our new house, were moving, settling in, I had long-term company over the summer, and then I was starting nursing school. I wanted to start a new project, yes, but I thought it was probably a bad idea.

Then one day, while I was unloading the dishwasher, this character voice started a soliloquy in my head and just would not shut her hole until I went to the computer and wrote out the first scene of what ended up being my first chapter.

Note to the above: I've always sort-of rolled my eyes inwardly when I've read other people's accounts of what I just said. My characters don't talk to me. That's ridiculous. Neither do they control me. I control them. So trust me, when this narrative voice popped up, it was weird.

Truthfully, she shut up after I got that first chapter out, but her voice was so strong and so insistent that I wrote the entire novel springboarding from this single character's voice.

The voice started talking to me around the beginning of August; I started class on August 17th (I think--around there). I wrote during those last two weeks, around 17k or so. And then, during the beginning of the semester, I would write a little here and there until I got a few more chapters out. Then nursing school hit me with its full force, and I stopped.

Fast-forward to NaNoWriMo. This was the first time I picked the story back up, after at least 2 months of nothing. I wrote diligently for the first 2 1/2 weeks of the challenge, but as you may remember me whining about, I had 3 tests and the end of the semester in the latter half of November, so I quit writing in order to study (and it paid off--4.0, baby!). By the time December break rolled around, I was exhausted. I'd had great plans to finish the novel during my break, but it was looking bleak.

Then, after the Christmas festivities were over and everyone (hubby) was back at work, I thought--heck, I only have 2 more weeks of break. Maybe I should do some writing.

So I did. I started at 51k and wrote every single day. I wrote like a mad woman. I would run, work my at-home day job, then write for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening/night, and start again the next day.

Last Friday, I finished writing at 86,115 words. It was freaking cathartic. I even cried during a scene of the climax.

Now, even though I've been writing diligently for (counts on fingers and toes) almost 17 years now, I started seeing my biggest changes when I finally started finishing novels. And with each novel that I've finished, I feel like I've learned stuff and grown even more. This time was no different.

So here are some things I learned from writing ALL THAT REMAINS:

1. If I don't write, I don't feel like myself. Those 2 months of the semester in which I was so bogged down with school and studying, I was deeply depressed. I hated nursing school. I resented everything about it. Then NaNo came along, and it was like a slap upside the head.

2. I can write, even when I'm so busy I can barely go to sleep at night due to the anxiety (I worry a lot. Too much.) The writing makes me feel like I'm in control of something in a storm of uncertainty.

3. Every time I finish a novel, my capacity for daily writing grows. I used to only be able to write 500 words or so a day (which is great, don't get me wrong.) But during this weird exercise, I was averaging more like 3-5,000 words a day. (And that's how I wrote 35,000 words in 8 days.)

4. There comes a point when your writing muscle truly responds like a muscle. Even when you're tired and battling a headache and just plain feeling crappy, you force those words out, and when you read them the next day--they're not as bad as you thought they'd be. Some of them are even halfway decent. Hard work, diligence, and constant refining of your voice and your craft does pay off. It's like running 2 miles every day. It's not long, and it's not much, but it's enough. It strengthens your muscles and improves your cardiovascular system, cuts down on stress, fuels your body with endorphins and gives you the juice to succeed for the rest of your day. Writing is like that.

I'm sure there are plenty of other "lessons" I could squeeze out of this crazy experience, but this post is long enough. Soon I'll be venturing into revisions, which is entirely new territory for me. I start back to nursing school today. I'm starting the semester off with a test--if you don't pass it with a 90 or higher, you're out of the program. No pressure, right? But it's a muscle, and a muscle that I've worked. I lay in bed last night mentally calculating IV drip rates and insulin dosages. I've got this.

You've got this.

Believe me, I'm no one special. I just like to punish myself every once in a while, and I can be like my cat with her catnip-stuffed Christmas tree toy: once I've got my teeth in it, I'll shake it until it's dead. And I'll growl at anything that tries to take me away from it until I'm done.

That may have been the worst analogy ever.

Penis.

You Know What's Weird?

2012-01-03T15:56:00.004-05:00

It's weird to be Facebook friends with people you had small crushes on in high school or earlier. Weird to remember that little thrill of passion when you saw them or talked to them, only now to see them in photos with their wives and little kids. And you in yours. Weird.

I've been writing pretty steadily for the past five days. As any of my Twitter followers know, I start back to the new semester of nursing school this coming Monday, January 9th. Back when I was college the first time, I actually looked forward to the return to semester. Breaks felt like a lot of flailing around with nothing to do. This time, I'd easily give an arm for another month or two. I know there's no sense in complaining, but I'll do it anyway, right?

Anyhoodle, I've pretty much written this entire draft of Token (new title pending) in fits and bursts. I went two and a half months without touching it, then did NaNoWriMo, then stopped, and have written almost another 20k since last Thursday. It's weird. I'm not like that. I'm definitely the tortoise--slow and steady, 2k per day kind of thing. But this has results, I can't deny it.

The book has a fairly extended climax, or rather several smaller climaxes before the big one (still talking book here.) I'm in the second of these four climaxes, and it's now to the point where Husband can tell what kind of scene I'm writing based on the angry music pounding out of our office while he plays Skyrim from the safety of our living room. So far the tune of choice has been A Perfect Circle's "Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums."

My original write goal was to be at 80k by Friday, but now that I'm already nearly to 75k, I'm going to push it up to 85k by Saturday. I've had this crazy feeling that I won't be able to write once I start back, but that's silly. I have to save a little time this weekend to study, though, because guess what I have to do on my first day back in class? Take a test. And it's one of our pass/fail the program ones. No pressure. I'm not too concerned about it, honestly--it's a med calculation test, and I made a 100 on the one we took in November just like it. So yes, you want me to calculate your drug dosage. I'm also learning how to insert IV's and catheters this semester--any volunteers?

It snowed on Tuesday, too.

That Reflective Time of Year

2011-12-28T10:06:00.002-05:00

It feels like every year is going by faster and faster, doesn't it?

January 1st will mark the 2-year anniversary of this blog. Of course, things are much cooled down these days compared to when I (and many others) got going in early '10, but that's okay. Blog life has cooled down while my personal life has heated way, way up. I suppose that's the best way for things to be, right?

So, here's the obligatory "resolution" post.

Resolutions/Goals for 2012

Keep my 4.0 in nursing school.
Run a 5k.
Be able to do 5 real push-ups.
Query a novel.
Cultivate a good studying/writing/reading schedule and stick with it.
Try to write at least twice a week during the semester.
Read before going to sleep at night.
Maybe break my coffee habit. (Maybe.)

Those are all very do-able, and most are necessary. A few years running now I've managed to achieve all my goals, so I'd like to keep it up!

Whatever your wishes/resolutions/goals are for the new year, I hope you find much success and happiness while you're having at it.

See you in 2012!

Hubby got me a split rail fence for Christmas! How romantic!
But really, I wanted one! Our front yard will soon look totally adorable!

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-20T10:43:00.003-05:00

I hope you are all experiencing the magic of this time of year.

The weather outside is far from frightful, unless you count the huge temperature snaps we're having. One day the high is 48, and the next it's 72. Last year we had a white Christmas (one of only a handful I can recall); this Christmas it's supposed to be 52 degrees and sunny.

I've been taking full advantage of the break from school. We had some electrical and plumbing work done around the house that's been sorely needed since we moved in. I've cleaned and organized the place within an inch of its life.

I finally finished The Tudors, which I started last Christmas. I've crocheted a bunch of stuff.

I started rewriting/revising one of my novels from last year, the one that's always whispering in the back of my head.

I've had good news and bad news.

I went to a fun Christmas party last Saturday and saw friends from college whom I haven't seen in 5 years.

Hubby and I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. Equally important and exciting were the trailers for The Dark Knight Rises and John Carter. I read the John Carter of Mars series when I was a kid and have been excited for this movie since I heard about it--and even better, it actually looks pretty good!

I'm trying hard not to count how few days I have remaining of break and instead just enjoy the crap out of what I do have. That's the secret to life, I guess: enjoy the crap outta stuff while you still have it.

Happy holidays, my friends.

My Christmas tree. It looked better before I took 2/3 of the presents to my in-laws' house (where they will be opened.)

Party Time! Excellent!

2011-12-09T09:20:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm finished with my first semester of nursing school. I actually finished on Tuesday, but I've been far too busy enjoying said break for anything longer than a tweet and Facebook update.

I made all A's this semester, which I'm very happy about (of course). Next semester I'll be taking the second half of nursing fundamentals, A&P 2, and pharmacology. So, you know--it's going to suck.

But I'm not thinking about next semester yet. I don't have to think about next semester until January 9th.

I'm finished with my Christmas shopping, though I'm still assembling some of the pieces. I've made some new crochet items this year--a big step up from last year's scarves and hats. And yes, the kitties are going nuts over the Christmas tree.

I've got the itch to work on my WIP. I'm not making myself hold to any defined goal, but I'd love to see it get into the third act, at least. I'm thinking 2012 might be my year to kick it into gear, you know?

Tonight is my husband's work Christmas party. He works for a big company, and he's been hearing stories about their Christmas parties since he started working there. They give away prizes; this year includes a Kindle Fire(s?) and HDTV's, among other things. We're super unlucky (minus the $147 we found on the ground a month ago--very out of character), but I'm really crossing my fingers for a Kindle Fire!

I've never been to a nice office Christmas party before. This one is cocktail attire! Crazy! So I have my new dress, new hooker boots, and all day to think about how I'll do my hair (tonight will be my first night meeting most of his coworkers). I'm sure it'll be fun... I just hope it doesn't end up like this:

(warning: spoilers for Mad Men and also not for the faint of stomach...)

The End is the Beginning is the End

2011-12-01T08:00:00.001-05:00

Are you getting tired of reading a laundry list of my tasks yet? I know I'm tired of writing them. Fortunately for both of us, only two remain: finals!

Yes, my first semester of nursing school is almost over. Next Monday and Tuesday, then I'm free! Free! <---can you tell I'm excited?

It snowed on Tuesday. That's right--snow in Georgia in November. If it snows at all here, it's not until at least January--sometimes late December. We're having the wackiest fall weather I've seen in a while, though. One day it's 39 degrees, the next it's 60. Gotta love the South...

Technically speaking, I did not "win" NaNoWriMo. Too many tests, papers, and too much studying got in the way. But I did write 32,000 words, and I did make A's on every single test this semester, so I call that a win. But if you add together what I managed to write during the semester with the NaNo wordcount, I'm just over 50k. The novel itself is shaping up well. My brain is in that hyperactive state where stuff gets dangerous--trying to come up with too many ideas, fit in too many interesting elements, that ends up making my manuscript a hot mess and leaving me crying in the corner when I think about revisions.

I put up the Christmas tree (it's artificial--first time in a while). The cats immediately climbed it. And believe me, if you've never seen a naughty cat jump from the top of a 7.5-ft tree after getting sprayed with a water bottle, it's a sight to behold. Last night I put on some ornaments, and this morning there are about 8 on the floor.

Why do all the television shows I watch have to go on mid-season break right as I'm about to get free time?

I'm excited about having some time to read. I only managed about 4 books this semester and 5 audiobooks (I drive 3+ hours a week to class). The last book I finished was the latest installation in Karen Chance's Cassandra Palmer series, Hunt the Moon. If you like urban fantasy and haven't read these books, do yourself a favor. She's pretty much my author-idol on every level: characters, plot, action writing. And now I'm reading Tangled Tides by our very own Karen Hooper!

My great plans for Christmas break?

1. Write. I'm not going to say finish my novel, but I'm going to do some damage.

2. Crochet. I've been finding pictures of projects on Pinterest like a fiend. First up are going to be an infinity scarf and a coffee cup cozy.

3. Finally finish The Tudors. I watched the first 3 seasons last Christmas while I was crocheting and wrapping presents, and I've had the fourth season for about six months, unwatched. Good times will be had.

I hope all you Americans had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday! I had my first deep-fried turkey, and it was pretty good!

Now I'll go off into my study cave, where I'll try to remember an entire semester's worth of nursing textbook (40+ chapters!) and learn everything about the nervous system.

Happy December!

I Did It

2011-11-21T06:30:00.000-05:00

It took a solo shopping trip, shedding my last clinical day, getting 2 good test grades, and a mini-mondo (doesn't even make sense) shopping trip with my mother-in-law in which I procured a few Christmas decorations, but I finally let go of the stress.

Have some things suffered? Yes. I haven't written another word on my NaNo novel since my write-in with Nicole Ducleroir last Wednesday. As of today, I'm a little over 10,000 words behind. Doesn't matter. I'm not going to finish, and I'm okay with it. I have 23,002 words that I didn't have before November 1. I showed myself that I can write every day, even when I'm really, really busy. Even more important, I showed myself that I'm mature enough to make tough decisions about self-denial and discipline. And it payed off--the test that I gave up NaNo for ended up being my highest test grade of the semester.

I also slept a lot. Friday night I went to bed at 8:20pm and woke up at 8:30am. When's the last time you got 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep? It was glorious. Last night, after shopping with Evan's mom, I snuggled with Evan on the couch (again, around 8:30) while he was playing Final Fantasy XIII and fell asleep with the kitties wrapped around me.

Oh, and you know what else I did? This:

The final painting project is now crossed off my December To-Do list before December. Before this paint job, the whole wall was painted the same beige color as above the chair rail, but now the bottom half is "Carroway Seed." Although I don't like giving her money, I ended up buying Martha Stewart paint because I'm a cheapskate at heart, and the gallons were on sale for 19 bucks. I was pretty iffy about the paint at first--it's very, very watery/runny, but it ended up giving really nice coverage with only one coat. My mother-in-law swears by the Benjamin Moore paint that costs 50 bucks a gallon, but that's just not in my budget right now (or rather, I don't want it to be). I'm happy with the end result, though.

The paint makes a huge difference in the living room, and my hideous couch finally doesn't look so bad. Evan even rearranged the furniture while I was out shopping. It's not Christmas tree friendly, but we still have a couple weeks before the tree will go up, so that's okay.

Last year's NaNo novel is whispering in my ear, but I'm going to ignore it for now. I'm afraid Lola Sharp might fly down here and beat me with my manuscript if I don't finish Token.

So. Things are good. Things are groovy. I've smiled a lot in the past few days. School is so close to over I can taste it. The temperature has been in the 40's, which is very holiday-spirit-inducing.

I'm happy.

Are you happy? What have you been up to? Thanksgiving plans this week? Black Friday shoppers? Cyber Monday clickers? Do tell.

Just Let Go

2011-11-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

The boiling point, the straw that broke the camel's back--you know what I mean. Sometimes it results in an uncontrollable fit of rage, or maybe a crying jag or an ice cream binge. We all handle it differently.

Yesterday, I reached mine. It's a culmination of things: the semester's incredible stress load building and building and building, not having enough time to keep my house clean (which is very important to me, and a very big stressor when it's not clean), not having enough time to spend with my husband, barely making my hours for my (thank goodness work-from-home) job...you name it, I probably have it as a stressor right now.

And then Monday I had exam number 3 for nursing school, and yesterday I had my next-to-last exam in Anatomy & Physiology, which happened to be a lab practical. Because of the way the A&P instructor does her grades, I have a good bit of leeway in that test grade. Honestly, I could fail it and still pull an A out of the class, as long as I get an A on the final. The nursing exam took up every bit of my time from last Thursday night until Monday morning.

I stopped doing NaNoWriMo. I stopped cooking. I stopped talking to my husband, mostly, and I stopped smiling.

Now all the tests are done. I don't have tests again until December 5-6, finals. I have Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping with my MIL and other good things.

But the stress is still there. I didn't get that feeling of decompression after I turned in my exam yesterday. I didn't feel great about the grade, and even though I have "wiggle room" I'm still a perfectionist, a straight-A student who feels like an 89 equates failure. Stress.

I'm 8,000 words behind on NaNoWriMo and I don't care. I realized that even writing, as much as I love it, is a stressor to me right now.

I can't take any more. There's a principle in psychology, called the allostatic load, which basically states that there will be physiological consequences when more stress builds up than your body can handle. Chronic stress, the kind that gives you hypertension and puts you at cardiovascular risk. The kind that steals years from you.

So I'm letting go. I don't like it. I'm not the letting go type. I'm the hold-on-by-the-fingernails-until-I-die-of-the-pressure type. But I'm going to try.

I'm going to write, yes. But am I going to kick myself if I don't hit 50k by November 30th? No. I made great strides in my novel, found plot twists and characters that are fantastic.

Am I going to spend all of my Christmas break frantically trying to finish my novel? No. I thought I would, and then the thought of that made me cry a little. Seriously, cry. Writing shouldn't make you cry. The things you love shouldn't make you cry.

So give yourself permission to LET THE F--- GO. What's important? I'll tell you: family, loved ones, your pets, YOURSELF. YOURSELF. Yourself.

I'm going to spend my December crocheting Christmas gifts, trying to learn how it knit, organizing my closets, and painting my living room. I'm going to finally finish The Tudors as I wrap presents, just like I did last year and loved it. I'm going to cook. I'm going to run.

Because next semester? Next semester laughs at this semester. Next semester is this semester's great-granddaddy. And if I don't let go of the stress now, then who knows what will happen? What will I look like come March?

I don't want to know.

So give yourself permission to let go. I am. And I'm going to try like hell to actually do it.

Seven Things (not samurai, sadly)

2011-11-09T07:00:00.002-05:00

1. For the first time ever, I actually utilized Dropbox the way it's supposed to be used.
a. (subpoint to 1) I also finally remembered there's a Starbucks in my campus bookstore that's much closer to the parking deck than the library. Next time, I'll bring a coat. #marketingploy

2. Um, the point of 1 was to say that I wrote between lab and class today (at Starbucks) and managed to get almost the full 1,667 in. It was super nifty to be able to pick it up out of Dropbox instead of trying to remember the gist of where I left off.

3. I'm listening to so much Maynard this NaNo that I'm even dreaming with "Judith" as a backdrop.

4. A NYT bestseller whom I've been fangirling since I was 14 and follow on Twitter listens to Christmas music when she's having the worst writing days. I decided to apply that principle to my LIFE, so I started listening to a holiday station on Pandora over the weekend. Not only was I super productive (like, wrote 2 papers AND painted my kitchen and bathroom), but it put me in a good mood. Yeah, I'm one of those people who loves seeing Christmas decorations go up early and only takes my tree down when it's absolutely dead as can be (and then we burn it in the firepit and it's fun and games.)

5. I've been randomly asking people all week what their favorite Christmas song is. Consider this me asking you. For me, the holidays are a mixture of happiness, joy, and some sense of aching sorrow. Therefore, my favorite Christmas songs are, to me, both beautiful and sad. "The Christmas Song," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "I'll Be Home for Christmas."

6. I have to study a sheep's brain for my lab practical next week...

7. I hope you, person reading this right this moment, are happy. If not, you should probably listen to some Christmas music.

First NaNoWriMo Check-in

2011-11-03T07:00:00.004-04:00

Yesterday at Target I caved to sentimentality and bought the same kind of Glade candle that I burned the first year I won NaNoWriMo. In case you're curious, it's the Creamy Custard/Apple Cinnamon 2 in 1. I actually haven't gotten it again since that NaNo, so it's special. I remember a lot about that November: I was a month away from my wrist surgery, I got really sick and wrote anyway, and I broke all kinds of personal records for word count and such. That novel eventually became the first one I ever finished.

Happy memories.

It's funny how much things can change in 2 years, isn't it?

Two years ago Evan and I were living in the shoebox apartment; this year we're 5 months into our own house that we bought and pay for like grown-ups.

Two years ago I had no clue what I'd be doing with myself; this year I'm almost done with my first semester of nursing school, have 4 finished novels under my belt and am merrily whiling away on my 5th.

Also, two years ago we didn't have these:

Writing used to have a high production value for me, as in it was a production for me to get started. Things had to be clean, my desk had to be just so, the right candles lit, the perfect music, etc. I still appreciate those things, but I can plunk out words whenever and wherever I need to now (though I still need music, if at all possible). Maybe I'm growing up, huh?

There's usually a NaNo thread showing off pictures of your writing space (which I love), but I didn't find it this year, so in the spirit of then-and-now, here we go:

I'm not sure where the original of this photo is, but this is what it looked like during the first year I won NaNo., 2009.

Last year's space. I won't lie--I loved this office, and I still kinda miss it.

My current set-up. I have a big desk calendar hanging on the wall to my left now, but everything else is the same. See how I tried to copy my old setup? It's not the same, but I'm pretty used to it now. Oh, and there's a lamp tucked in that back left corner by my desk, too...

So tell me: what's changed with you? Or if this is your first year participating, how's it going? Actually, how's it going period?

NaNoWriMo shoutout

2011-10-31T07:43:00.000-04:00

Hey!

In all my insanity, I'm going to try to do NaNoWriMo this year! I'm friends with many of you from last year, but if you're new and would like to buddy me, my user id is summerbp.

Anyone else doing it this year?

You should probably look at this picture of my cat Magoo helping me study instead of thinking about what a waste of web space this post was.

I Tried to Resist...

2011-10-26T08:10:00.000-04:00

So about two months ago, a girl in my nursing program had a little accident in her house and ended up fracturing her foot.

She was asked to withdraw from the program.

They expect you to be in peak physical condition for the duration of the program, which includes being able to bear full weight on both feet--thus, the withdrawal of the broken foot.

This freaked out a lot of us, especially me. My husband will be the first to tell you that I'm accident prone, and while it maybe true that I trip a lot, I've never *knock on wood* broken anything or gotten seriously hurt more than a couple times (sprained my ankle jumping out of a swing when I was an elementary school tutor, but the kids thought I was awesome).

So I stopped running. I was having serious shin splint problems anyway, and the running was aggravating them to the point of constant pain--I even went to the doctor about it.

I switched my workouts to aerobics and yoga, which are great. I like them, I do.

But I miss running.

And now that the weather is cool, the siren call of the pavement is growing stronger. Running in the summer here is terrible, but as soon as the humidity breaks it's the best thing in the world.

So, here I am. About to do some power yoga and then sneak outside and go for a run. *sigh*

Please don't let me break my ankle, running gods!

Random Thoughts for a Rainy Day

2011-10-19T09:17:00.000-04:00

We went almost the entire summer without rain, but it's rained three times this week already. No one is complaining--it seems that we just recovered from the terrible drought of the last decade, only for the lake to be down several feet again. (At the height of our drought, our local water (and water that went to Florida) supply, Lake Lanier, was down almost 30 feet.)

Like any good writer, I love a dreary day! Sadly I can't spend it writing--I'm supposed to be studying muscles, bones, joints, and skin for my next anatomy exam tomorrow. So far I've slept in, worked out, and am finally eating breakfast and thinking about Christmas.

I've noticed that people are posting Nordstrom's sign a lot on Facebook:

I get it. I really do. But personally, I love Christmas. I'd like to live in a Christmas-decorated world for about 9 months out of the year, with the other 3 months decorated for fall.

This will be my first Christmas as a homeowner. I've already decided where to put my tree. As for whether or not it will be an artificial tree, I still haven't decided. The kittens destroyed last year's tree so hard that I'm loathe to go through that again, especially since it'll be on carpet instead of tile. They may be a year older, but they're not any more mature, let me assure you.

And along the Christmas thoughts, I've decided that I'm going to try and do most of my Christmas shopping in support of small business, whether local brick and mortars, or through shops like Etsy. I'm also going to try and finish most of it by the first week in December so that A) I can spend December writing, and B) those whose items I'm buying can have plenty of time to use my money to do their own Christmas shopping.

Holidays should be interesting this year. I haven't talked about it before, but my grandmother (mom's mom) has been in a terrible battle with her third round of breast cancer for the last two years. This time it metastacized in her bones. She's doing better now than she was for a while, but she's still not in great shape. For the past 3 years, my parents have gone to stay with her for Thanksgiving (she lives in Florida), but this year they've gotten her to agree to come up before Thanksgiving and stay through Christmas. So I fully expect Evan and I will be doing the double Thanksgiving this year, which we've not done before. Even worse, we'll probably be doing damage control with his parents, as it's still very iffy whether or not Evan's brother and his wife will be able to come for the holidays.

Thanksgiving, of course, will be a blur for me, since it's the final week of class before the semester ends and we have finals. I'm just going to eat my turkey and take a nap, and this year I won't be doing the Black Friday thing, unless my MIL really wants my company.

And now that I've had an internal conversation on my blog, I'm going to eat my grapefruit now...

The Thrilling Conclusion

2011-10-17T12:39:00.000-04:00

Thanks for all the response to my ridiculous age poll! I think the general consensus was probably around 23. Which makes sense, as I still think of myself as 23 for some reason. I guess I exude the 23-year-old vibe.

As for my actual age, I'm on the downhill slope of 25. I like to hold myself against impossible standards for 25-year-olds. I mean, it's always 25 that gets the comparison, isn't it?

"He left me for his 25-year-old secretary!"

"She has the body of a 25-year-old!"

"I wish I was 25 again!"

You see?

Currently I feel more around 55 than 25, but that's stress for you. I cut off my hair out of laziness, because I don't like the way ponytails pull on my hair, and up-do's require too much time, and I have to have my hair out of the way for clinicals. Not holding myself up to the standard too well, am I?

I did some fun things this weekend. You should look at my pictures and compliment me.*

Me and my brother being silly. "TRAPPED IN THE CORN!"

Me and el husband.

This is what a corn maze looks like from the interior.

That's right, we were carving pumpkins like it's 1992!

And that's my girl cat, eviscerating Evan's pumpkin throat. Poor pumpkin.

What fun thing did you all do this weekend?
Oh, and I thought the season premiere of The Walking Dead was great! How about you other fans??

*you don't have to compliment me. Really.

QUICK AGE POLL

2011-10-14T16:43:00.000-04:00

Very straightforward and completely unnecessary. Recent events have led me to wonder: how old do I really look? And for those of you who know how old I am, just pretend.

Well????

2011-10-12T14:38:00.000-04:00

This time 6 months ago I was in the final stretches of finishing up my fourth novel, writing an average of 2k per day and generally not knowing how good I had it.

These days I write 2k, but it's all in the form of nursing notes, care plans, interventions, or papers.

I've actually been continuing to work on my latest WIP, but since school started I think I've eeked out what? 2 chapters? 3? And each one is taking me at least 2 weeks to write, just a few bursts at a time. Since I finished the last chapter almost 2 weeks ago, I've managed to write about 300 words, and it was the night before my second nursing exam. I was so wired from studying all day that I couldn't quiet my brain for sleep, so I pulled out my netbook and wrote an introduction for the next chapter. Of course, as soon as I started that, I got sleepy.

I got so used to having time to write that now that I'm lucky to squeeze in 30 minutes every few weeks, I'm cranky. It makes me resent nursing school, housework, laundry, dishes (let's be honest--I resented those anyway.)

I have irrational fears that the more I stuff into my brain about muscle anatomy and the stages of infection (for example), the more writing stuff is dribbling out. I'm afraid that at the end of these two years, my fiction writing will read like a textbook.

I had my hospital orientation this morning. Have I mentioned how ridiculous our scrub uniforms are? I attend a military university, and our scrubs are very retro-military-esque. PURE white, and I mean WHITE. Zip-up collared smocks with patches and bars on the sleeves. The nursing students are called the "marshmallow crew" by the hospital employees. You can certainly spot us from a distance, that's for sure.

Anyway, I'm assigned one of the big hospitals in the region. And whoa, is it nice! I'm going to be on the ortho/neuro floor for the year (sweet!), and you wouldn't believe the technology that's in these places. Even the toilets are smart.

I'm afraid I won't be able to talk much about my clinical experiences (HIPPA and all that), other than in vague terms. But I'll certainly share anything extra exciting!

So. I have two nursing exams down (A's on both!), two plus the final to go. One final big paper, my dietary analysis for nutrition and a teaching plan on lactose intolerance. My next A&P exam is in a week, and my cadaver lab is next Tuesday! (I also can't talk much about that, because the cadavers are still considered patients with HIPPA rights.)

The semester has absolutely FLOWN by. Seriously, I feel like every time I wake up, three more weeks have passed.

I'm living for December 6th.

In Which a Post is Not About Nursing School

2011-10-10T07:00:00.001-04:00

I took a mental health day this past Saturday and gave myself permission to do some much-needed yardwork.

Two weeks ago, we bought quite a few plants at a garden expo, but most of them have been sitting around, dying bit by bit because I've been too busy to plant them.

We also finally got the first half of the weed pit cleared! Evan made a fire that burned for about 7 hours, and with his trusty machete cleared all the jungle weeds away. It looks so crazy-different that we can't stop gawking at it.

Now the picture show begins. I didn't take explicit "before" photos, stupidly, but I have a couple that will get pretty close.

Exhibit 1: The Weed Pit (or as I like to think of it, the Sarlacc Pit.)

If you look past the end of the deck, all that mess is the "before."

And now, the after! A clear view into the neighbor's yard.

Exhibit 2: The Water-Logged Spot

What I thought was a before picture turned out to be a video clip. Oh well! it was weedy and dank before, how about that?

Exhibit 3: The Deck

We're planning to build a corner trellis/pagoda on this end of the deck. The confederate jasmine will eventually cover it, we hope, and provide some nice shade. Soon there will be lattice covering the junk, too.

Exhibit 4: The Front Flower Bed

The first of several incarnations.

Current. Notice how the lantana has eaten most of the bed. That will be moved in the spring.

Lining the walkway we have nandina, 24 dianthus/violas, and underneath waiting for spring about 3 dozen bulbs.

And for the remaining photos:

I love violas almost to a fault.

Black tupelo tree, turning a beautiful purplish-red.

Beginnings of our vegetable garden, currently hosting chocolate mint, creeping rosemary, and Provence lavender. Oh, and Monty.

Finally, the view-from-the-road before and after pictures.

Before.

Four months in.

I'm Not Gonna Lie...

2011-10-05T14:37:00.000-04:00

The past 2 weeks really have made me question if nursing school was the right choice. Nothing I can specifically put my finger on, and hopefully something that will go away as my knowledge base and skills set improves.

I'm in the critical few days before my next nursing fundamentals exam. Time has shrunk so that each hour only lasts for 5 minutes, and it's exponentially related to how much $*&#% I have to get done by next Wednesday, October 12.

So why the #@$% am I on Blogger? GOOD QUESTION.

Mostly because I need a quick break from typing out my notes on Oxygenation!

So my test on Monday will cover 11 chapters of fundamentals, 3 chapters of medical math, and 3 chapters of medical terminology!

Fundamentals chapters this time around include 3 over community-based nursing, oxygenation in regards to respiratory function, safety, body mechanics and mobility, disaster preparedness, sensory and cognitive processes, asepsis and infection control!

No, these things don't really go together. Yes, it makes it more difficult to remember it all. Sort of.

Anyway, this video sums up how I'm feeling pretty well:

Cheers!

Today is...

2011-10-03T07:10:00.000-04:00

A special day in my household.

Today, my husband starts what I hope will be a job that he will love.

Today, my husband also turns 28. It's hard to believe the first time I laid eyes on him, he was 20. Where has all the time gone?

Doing stuff like this, I hope. (I know the picture is bad, but it's absolutely one of the cutest pictures we ever took of the kittens.)

According to the Interwebz, today is also the day that Abraham Lincoln designated that the last Thursday in November be Thanksgiving. Pretty cool!

It's also Nicole Ducleroir's birthday. You should go send her well wishes, because she's one of the best people I'm lucky to know.

Happy Monday, people! Spread the love.

Nursing School--week 7!

2011-09-30T12:11:00.000-04:00

I'm officially half-way through my first semester of school. Isn't that crazy? It's crazy. We all know time flies when you're having fun, but it also flies when you're holding on with both hands to every scrap of sanity that you have left, trying to keep up with a bus that's running 200 mph.

Don't worry, I don't use that clunky of a metaphor in my writing. :) (I hope.)

Today was the last lab of the semester. In two weeks, I'll be having my hospital clinical orientation! I'm extremely happy that I got my hospital of choice for clinical--it's a giant thing in my city, one of the best in the state. And it's only about 15 minutes away from my house, which means no getting up at 3am for this girl!

A woman from my lab pod will be in my clinical group, which I'm thrilled about. We're the only two from our lab who got assigned together. Clinical assignments are across the board, so we're mostly mixed in with the 100+ students from the main university campus.

My sources say that I'm going to be on the surgical floor! *happy dance* I'll be there all year.

We took some goofy/hilarious pictures in class today, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share them. We're not supposed to post pictures of anything related to clinicals/in our uniforms/etc online.

So. I have a ton of stuff to finish today, and then it's birthday weekend for hubby. He's going to see Wicked tomorrow with his mom, so I'm going to enjoy having some weekend time to myself (which no doubt will involve cleaning toilets and doing laundry--yay).

Next nursing exam is on October 10, so it's time to start studying!

We've started some major yard work this week, too. Borrowed the big tiller from my in-laws and broke ground for what will be our vegetable garden. Still need to mix in the soil conditioner and 10-10-10/lime; hopefully we'll do that today. As it's hubby's last day on the job (new job starts Monday!), he's coming home early.

I'll get pictures of the yard once we have all our loot from last weekend's garden expo planted. I sure do miss my old garden, though...

So. I'm off to do nutrition and put together a presentation. I hope you are all well and wonderful! Happy October!

This Week in Nursing! (week...6?)

2011-09-23T14:32:00.000-04:00

Is it really already 6 weeks into my nursing program? Insane.

Good news, since I hadn't found out for my Best Week Ever post last week, but I also made a 97 on my first A & P exam. I'm irritated at the single question I missed--I knew it, I just didn't read the question close enough! But anyway.

This coming week I have my first lab practical exam, and I have to memorize all 206 bones and be familiar with many of the bone markings by Tuesday morning, as well as all the other stuff we've covered in lab so far.

Service Learning at the high school this week was fun, though I was exhausted at the end of the day. We took heights and weights of around 120 students over the course of the day (almost 8 hours). They were freshmen and sophomores, and holy cow they look little. Some of the boys I seriously couldn't believe were in high school. They obviously haven't hit their growth spurts yet...

We only have one nursing lab left before we start our clinical rotations! Eek! That scares me. I'll have fall break, then the GANS (Georgia Association of Nursing Students) conference, and then we're in the hospital! We'll be getting our assignments next Tuesday. Since our program is spread across 3 campuses, with around 120 students total, odds are very high that we're going to be in clinical groups with people we don't know, which is sad. I'm going to miss my little lab pod of 9. We've gotten very close in such a short amount of time.

Today we practiced donning PPE's (personal protection equipment), which included the bonnet, booties, gown, gloves, and face mask. I felt very much like I was about to walk into a zombie infection or something. All I needed was my trusty machete...

I've lost my ability to take naps. Even though I'm tired, I have so much that I need to be doing that overwhelming guilt consumes me when I lie down, and I can't fall asleep. Sad, that. I miss my naps.

I managed to finish the last chapter I'd started writing and begin a new one in the WIP. Sent it to another CP for fun, and got good feedback, so I'm still feeling good about it. Certainly wish I had more time to write, but at least it's nice and intense when I do. Right now I'm able to use time on campus between Tuesday morning lab and Tuesday afternoon class to write.

SO MANY TV SHOWS! And no time to watch them. I've missed the premiere of most of my shows already, caught a few new ones, and don't even know when the premiere of some of my favorites is, like 30 Rock. Does anyone know? Has it already started? *cries* I want to watch the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy, but it's 2 hours! That's ridiculous!

I am taking some fun time tomorrow to go to the big garden expo that happens every fall. Since we bought the new house, the expo is right down the road! I can't wait to score some good deals!

So that's me.

How's tricks, sexies?

I'm Amongst Them

2011-09-21T07:00:00.001-04:00

Dear Blog Readers,

As you are reading this message, I will be hip-deep in high schoolers. Part of my program is performing "service learning," or community service. This semester I'll be helping a local high school nurse take part in a nationwide incentive to combat childhood obesity by measuring BMI's of students.

I'll admit, I'm a little dubious. Most high schoolers are taller than me, and I've been told I look 16 (though I really don't think that's true. Maybe 20, but not 16. I didn't have these boobs at 16, but I digress...).

It's been a long time since I've been around so many teenagers. Like, um, 2004, when I graduated high school? Yeah.

Should be interesting!

Best Week Ever!

2011-09-17T09:02:00.000-04:00

Fifth week of nursing school rundown:

Monday: first nursing fundamentals exam
Tuesday: first A&P lab quiz, first A&P exam, hubby has a job interview
Wednesday: done with all tests! Hallelujah! Try to remember what it's like not studying for tests!
Thursday: Start to freak out about skills check-off on Friday. Practice blood pressure over and over. Hubby gets job offer!
Friday: Skills check-off! PASS! Hubby takes new job! Get grade on my nursing test! A!

Celebrate!

The last year as been kicking us pretty hard, so it actually feels weird to have this much happiness in one week, but I can't complain! The weather is cooling, the cards are in our favor, and I'm downright happy, guys.

I also managed to finishing writing a chapter in my WIP! It was awesome and made me realize that I definitely need to keep writing time in my schedule.

Lost a girl out of my program because she broke her foot. I'm already accident-prone, so this really freaked me out. I'm going to be uber-careful not to put myself in willing casualty-zone, because I really can't afford to drop out of the program due to an injury. Note to self: save injuries for May.

Hoping to do some much-needed yard work this lovely weekend.

Also, I saw this picture and thought it was widely applicable:

Nursing School--week 4

2011-09-12T11:44:00.000-04:00

Took my first nursing fundamentals exam this morning, after pretty solid studying for several days prior. Nursing tests are formatted after the NCLEX, which is the licensing exam we have to take in order to be able to practice. NCLEX is all about the critical thinking, and not so much about hard-and-fast technical facts.

I'm good at technical facts. The critical thinking style is going to take some practice.

That being said, I still feel like I did pretty well, and after discussing the iffy questions with classmates afterward, I feel slightly better. I'm sure I passed, but I always want an A, which only allows for missing 5 questions. I know for sure I missed 1 question, but I guess I'll see in a few days...

Tomorrow is my first A&P exam, which should be more hard & fast. I'm feeling pretty good about it too, and I have all day to study as well as tomorrow morning/early afternoon.

The best thing about having the first tests under my belt is that I now have a better idea of how I need to approach studying in the future. I think I'm going to be able to structure my days better in terms to keeping up with homework and still having some free time.

I'm desperate for some free time. It feels like lately, every moment that I'm not studying I'm either exercising, doing necessary house work, or running errands.

I'm determined to work some writing time into my schedule, just so I can feel a little more in tune with myself. Nursing school has already consumed me so much that glancing over all the posts and Blogger and Twitter, and seeing how they're all about writing, already feels odd. For so long my world was focused on writing, and now it's so not that it seems microscopic in retrospect. Funny how things easily become consuming.

Anyway. Right now I have three kitties demanding food and love and such, and I've got the bad shakes from too much coffee and not enough food.

But today's goal is to try to write at least a few hundred words. And get outside! Our weather has been phenomenal since Lee breezed through, and I'm hoping fall is here to stay!

In passing!

2011-09-06T07:49:00.000-04:00

Somehow I managed to gain more followers during my silence! You guys are the best, and one day I hope to be able to visit you all--maybe Christmas?

I missed my 3rd Week of Nursing School post, because my body decided this past weekend would be a great time to try to get sick. Fortunately, with the aid of orange juice, Zyrtec, and Benadryl, I managed to will it mostly away.

Next week is my first Hell Week. I have my first nursing unit test on Monday, first lab test on Tuesday, as well as my first unit A & P test on Tuesday, then that Friday I'll have my official skills checkoff. I've already made 300 flashcards and still have more to go.

Just for the record, though, I am loving it. Seriously, this was the best decision I've made in a long time.

I'm also becoming even more of a nutrition nut, so I feel duty bound to tell you not to smoke and to check out this website for your health-related interests and needs: Healthfinder.

Last Thursday I went to the health center to see a NP about my leg, which has been killing me. As I suspected, she said shin splints, told me to ice and stop running. I did for a few days, but today I went back out and felt pretty good, and in no small part because the weather is drizzly and 65 degrees.

My brother is trying to convince me to run a 6k on October 22. This would be my first race, and I was kinda thinking a 5k to start out, but it's only 3/4 mile longer. I dunno. I'm still training, though I've made leaps and bounds of improvement, and it's still 6 weeks away. I'm thinking about it...

I hope the weather is treating you all nicely. We got rain for the first time in at least a month, and it's amazing! Some tornadoes hit the metro-Atlanta area, but doesn't look like it was too terribly bad, though I know from experience that any tornado is a bad tornado.

So.

And though I don't usually speak about things like this, because I don't believe in judging or making people feel bad, I do strongly support breast cancer awareness. So if you're familiar with the Facebook "game" relating to breast cancer, or not, check out this link.

Sparkly.

2011-08-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

So today I have anatomy lab, and we're discussing cells. One thing we will discuss is the cell cycle (mitosis, meiosis, etc.)

I wonder if my lab partner will look like this? Hmm?

Nursing School--week 2

2011-08-26T15:46:00.000-04:00

This is only my second week of nursing school--technically my first full week.

And all I have to say is this: Zzzzzzz...

Seriously, though--this has only been one week? I would swear each day has felt like its own week.

I don't want to sound complainy--I'm just still trying to settle myself into a decent schedule. Really, until after the 1st test, I'm not going to have a good feeling about how much/what I need to study. Until then, I'm erring on the side of over-abundance.

My brain already feels full just from Anatomy & Physiology, like there's no room for the nursing. I think it's partly because I have nursing lecture on Mondays and lab on Fridays, while A&P has lab AND lecture on Tuesdays and lecture on Thursdays, so those are closer together and feel infinitely more imminent.

Wednesday is my weekday off, and of course this being my first one I was all prepared to study and get ahead and BAM! Some construction crew cut the main lines providing internet to the university servers, so there was no accessing any of our online materials for 35 hours! That doesn't seem like a big deal, but ALL the classes put everything online, from lecture materials to homework and stuff you need to print out, blah blah. Major wrench thrown at everyone. Lesson learned: plan way ahead.

So. I'm studying like I've never studied and learning tons and tons. It's pretty cool. Next time you might think "s/he's just a nurse," go ahead and slap yourself.

And just so you know I'm still down to Earth, I got to spend the precious first half of my lunch break today cleaning up projectile cat vomit! Woo! Also, poor Monty (who's been sick for weeks, but slowly getting better) has been snotting green snot everywhere in the house. On the walls. On the brand new beige carpet. In your FACE. Lovely. Poor kitty.

*sigh* *yawn*

Tonight's my one night to relax, so I think we're having friends over to hang out. Which means I get to clean house!

Those of you in hurricane Irene's path, be safe! Remember--you can drink your own pee if you really, really have to! ;)

Blogging Focus

2011-08-25T09:15:00.000-04:00

It didn't take Mack long to figure out how to get to his favorite spot in the new house.

Well, friends, as you've no doubt astutely observed by now, I'm getting into the full swing of nursing school. I'm taking 11 hours this semester, which is about 4 hours more than I'd been expecting, and for those of you who don't speak college terminology, that's 1 credit hour short of a full-time load. Honestly, I've had semesters of 18 hours that were less busy than this.

This week alone I've spent an average of 4 hours a day studying, and on Monday night it was more like 5.5. Between Anatomy and Physiology and my nursing courses, there's just a ton of information that has to be crammed into my brain, and the sooner it's stuck there, the better.

I'm a textbook visual learner, which means in order for this stuff to sink in, I have to write it over...and over...and over... Unfortunately, since my wrist surgery, my right hand can't keep up like it used to, so I'm having to teach myself how to make the same visual/memorizational connections with typing. And then I make flashcards.

The good thing about this method is, once I'm done making all my notes, I've pretty much memorized it, so studying is just supplementary. The bad thing about this method is that it takes a ton of time.

As you know, I've gone from pretty much zero commitments to class 5 times a week, plus 4 hours of driving time on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and all this studying--not to mention figuring in time to work. Gotta pay those bills.

Sadly, this means I don't have time to write. Which is good, actually, and you know--it's like my subconscious knows (duh) when my active conscious is really invested in something very definitely not writing. All the urges to write fade away, tucking themselves up neatly in the back of my head, just waiting until the day I can open them again. Same thing happened during my college years, part one. I rarely wrote, and when I did it was just snatches here and there.

I'm going to be blogging once a week, most likely, and since I started this blog way back in the day for the purpose of having a writing regimen, it's going to have to suffice for now. I'll more than likely be keeping a nursing school diary, more for my own sake than those reading. However, I'll always keep the audience in mind and try to share anything funny, interesting, or pertinent. Posts about writing will be few and far-between (like they weren't already).

I don't really have time to read blogs anymore--that used to be my breakfasting activity, and these days breakfast is a five-minute affair between running and showering.

That being said, I still pop into Twitter and Facebook regularly, so if you're dying for a fix (haha), you can find me there!

My twitter handle is @summerbp, and on Facebook...well, I'm loathe to put it here, as it's my real name. I'm friends with many of you there already, so if you're not friends with me, you can probably find me through someone else. My real name is Summer, though, so you can identify me through that and my picture.

Tomorrow will likely be a Nursing School Week 2 post.

You're all lovely. I can't wait to palpate you, auscultate you, and assess your vital signs. I have warm hands, promise.

(Nursing) First Week

2011-08-19T08:56:00.001-04:00

I've successfully completed my first week back to school. As a life-long lover of learning, I've always enjoyed being in school, having education shape my routine and structure my days. And though I've been out for over three years, going back was like slipping into an old, but favorite, pair of shoes.

There are differences this time, of course--my undergraduate time was spent as an English major with a heavy dose of art and theatre courses. For class, I bought a hundred bucks' worth of novels and maybe some lit theory essays. "Homework" consisted of reading the text and being prepared to analyze and discuss during class. I grew tremendously as a writer during those years, both academic and non-academic, and I learned to think critically and analyze anything written. Those are skills.

But now I'm learning skills. As I told my brother on the phone yesterday, it's a crazy, amazing feeling to walk into class knowing nothing, and walk out 4 hours later knowing how to do things. Like, take vital signs, including blood pressure with the cuff (which has always been mysterious and interesting to me). Getting CPR-certified was another eye-opener. You suddenly have this weight of responsibility--if you see someone go down, more than likely you're the only one who's going to know how to respond. That's a lot of pressure. I constantly think about giving CPR, different scenarios in which it might happen, and run through the steps over and over in my head.

Learning a skilled trade is a whole different ballgame than getting a liberal arts degree. I wouldn't give up my degree for anything, and if I could do it over again, I would--every single time.

But nursing school is already drawing on a different part of my brain.

This weekend I have to write a paper about Why I Chose Nursing/What Nursing Means to Me. I have so many feelings about this subject, some of which I'm not sure belong in that paper. Such as: I like knowing things. I like having facts in my head like secrets the rest of the world doesn't know. When someone asks a question, I like to know the answer. I like being asked for an opinion because I'm the most qualified to answer.

Anatomy and Physiology makes me giddy. I'm going to know the name and function of every part of your body. It's like a secret language, an In club that only certain people are part of.

It's amazing.

Also, we're going to have a cadaver lab in mid-October and I am so excited.

These are all my nursing books--a cool dozen. They weigh about a thousand pounds. Mack for size reference.

2011-08-15T09:11:00.000-04:00

This morning, as I carried my shoes and iPod outside to get ready for my run, I was met by something I haven't felt in quite a while: crisp air. It was only 65 degrees, and the humidity was relatively low.

It made for a nice run, but more importantly put one thought in my head: fall is coming.

I start nursing school in 2 days. Starting a new fall semester is always exciting--fall semesters, in my experience, are better than spring semesters. Fall semesters have the better holidays, for one, not to mention the better weather. Fall semester...well, it brings FALL.

And I think we're all ready for some of this:

I love this decoration. So simple, yet so evocative.

Once upon a time, this is how I imagined my wedding reception.

Fall dinner party?

This is just too wonderful for words. The candles, the dried flowers and vines, the gourds--amazing. I could live in this picture forever.

Camping! Hiking! Everything is better in the mountains in fall.

Pure magic.

WHO AM I????

2011-08-10T10:00:00.001-04:00

I have somewhat of a dilemma, and I'm interested in opinions.

Okay, so: my full name is Cherokee Summer *****. From the time I was born, my parents called me Summer. I didn't even know my first name was Cherokee until I was at least in kindergarten.

I've been "Summer" for 25 years--except that I also answer almost as automatically to "Cherokee" because my grandmother (who has lived with my parents since I was in 9th grade), my oldest cousin, and all of my grandmother's friends call me by my first name.

Here's the thing: if you happen to go by your middle name, then you'll understand my pain--everything you fill out wants your legal first name, which of course for me is Cherokee. All through school and college, I'd correct the professor on the first day of class and ask to be called Summer. It usually was no big deal.

Well, tomorrow is my Orientation for nursing school. All my paperwork is for Cherokee. My ID tag that I'll be wearing to the hospitals is for Cherokee, not to mention my file that the hospitals will have is for Cherokee.

So I'm thinking, should I just embrace Cherokee as my "professional" name? (Not to be confused with my stripper name, Spooky McKinney.) I wouldn't have to deal with constantly correcting people to Summer, or explaining to hospital staff why I want to be called something different than my ID tag says, not to mention patients. And what if my classmates are trying to tell the hospital staff about "Summer," but they don't know who they're talking about, because to them I'm Cherokee?

Honestly, I'd be fine with people calling me Cherokee--like I said, I do identify it as my name. I've never actually introduced myself as Cherokee. That would be odd. And I'm not used to lots of people calling me by that name, but I'm sure I'd get used to it.

Opinions?

Tell the Truth Tuesday

2011-08-09T08:47:00.001-04:00

I have some this week, so I'll do it.

1. As a coping mechanism for my nursing school nerves, I've been playing a gross amount of Dragon Age on my Xbox. A gross amount, guys. It's possible that I'm slightly in love with one of the characters. The thing about Bioware games is that they're basically like an interactive book, the writing is THAT GOOD.

2. I ate a can of beans for lunch yesterday.

3. Last night I dreamed that I performed karaoke to the soundtrack of my latest WIP.

4. I've gotten to the point where I only put on real clothes if I'm going out. I'm not sure I remember how to dress like a fully functioning member of society anymore.

5. I've been thinking about what to wear to nursing school orientation on Thursday for at least a week now. And still don't know.

6. I'm afraid I won't make any friends in nursing school. How lame is that?

7. Last night I woke up because one of the cats was clawing my hair.

8. I secretly hope my brother-in-law and his fiancee don't find jobs in Maryland so they can move back down here and take the pressure off me and hubby. (I knowwww....so bad.)

9. I pretty much paint my fingernails just so I can scrape it off. I think it's as bad an addiction as biting them.

10. I went running in knee-high socks yesterday. They were compression socks, true, but knee-highs all the same!

Your turn:

Family Matters

2011-08-05T07:00:00.004-04:00

Family figures pretty heavily in my latest WIP. As I was writing the scene in which my MC meets her new baby niece for the first time, I realized that I've never really written anything that was family-centric before. Or, maybe I should say, so much family? And some of them actually pretty normal?

Okay, come to think of it, only one of my five novels actually didn't have family in it. In fact, my first novel completely revolved around family--or the lack thereof.

So now I've debunked my own theory that I don't write about families.

Still, I certainly haven't written such a large family before, and this one extends in several gnarly branches, too. There are a lot of female relatives to boot, which is something I'm having to flex the ol' writer's imagination on. I don't have any sisters and never had many close female friends growing up--the closest thing to sisterly camaraderie I've ever enjoyed was with my 2 cousins growing up, and we only saw each other once a year or so.

I dunno. Seems like a lot of the protagonists in urban fantasy (which the new WIP is) don't have strong family bonds. I guess it's a lot easier to be in mortal peril and save the world when you don't have to call Mom every Sunday, right? Or is it something else?

The family is just like this, only with smiles and no children and no skirts and certainly no--what is that? A woman cravat? Yeah, none of that either.

Mud. Sweat. Beer.

2011-08-03T07:00:00.003-04:00

There are 5k races...and then, there are 5k RACES!

I first came to learn of this Warrior Dash business via my friend who stayed with us last month. He participated in the Michigan event just a few days ago.

I'm all for maxing your body to the limits every once in a while. I've never done something quite like this, though when I was in college I went on two extreme hiking adventures that included swimming about 50 yards upstream a huge river, climbing rocks with no gear, and doing controlled falls down a mountainside. It was AWESOME (even though the last time I went, I got mild hypothermia. Them rivers be cold, yo.)

So there's the Warrior Dash (seriously, check out the link and watch the video on the main page), which is happening next year on the weekend before my 4th wedding anniversary. I'm thinking hubby and I are going to do it.

And then there's the Insanity version: Tough Mudder, whose cutesy name is pretty innocuous for the self-proclaimed "probably [the] toughest event on the planet." This event was designed by British Special Forces people, guys, and they call it Ironman meets Burning Man. And it's a 10k. This one takes place in February next year, and there's no way I'm going to be physically ready for it (they recommend being able to do 26 push-ups. I can't even do one regular push-up) by then, so maybe in 2013? A little bon voyage to nursing school and college in general?

I'm thinking YES.

(Seriously, watch the videos. It's awesome!)

It always gets away from me.

2011-08-01T07:17:00.001-04:00

My friend stayed with us for a week and a half in the beginning of July. He's also a writer, and one night we were lying drunken on the floor of my office talking about one of my projects and listening to iTunes. I mentioned that this was the soundtrack for said project, and when he asked how many songs were on it, I told him.

64.

He says, "Dude. That's not a soundtrack."

I can't just pare it down to 15-20 songs, otherwise I'll get so sick of them I can never listen to them again. Right?

Anyway, I started working on a new project. It's fun and going well so far, and I've been listening to my A Perfect Circle station on Pandora, but I've been at my 40 hour limit for a few days and anyway, I like having a dedicated iTunes playlist, so...

51 songs. That's not so bad, right? And I made a conscientious effort to put some different ones on there, not the same ol' that always inspire me.

I won't share all 51, but here's a nice run down:

"Devils" - Say Hi to Your Mom
"Run Away" - Sarah Jarosz
"Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" - AC/DC
"The Devils' Feet" - Azure Ray
"The Bad Touch" - The Bloodhound Gang
"Hang Me Up to Dry" - Cold War Kids
"A Siren" - Colour Revolt
"Euro-Trash Girl" - Cracker
"Passenger" - Deftones
"Until I Wake Up" - Dishwalla
"Feorah" - Downshallow
"Hotel California" - Eagles
"Shadowboxer" - Fiona Apple
"Bad Boyfriend" - Garbage
"Carry On Wayward Son" - Kansas
"Sick Cycle Carousel" - Lifehouse
"Waitress" - Live
"One Man Army" - Our Lady Peace
Rolling Stones Triumverate ("Honky Tonk Women, Sympathy for the Devil, Saint of Me")
"The Only Living Boy in New York" - Simon & Garfunkel
"At the Bottom" - Brand New

Eclectic. Just like my new WIP.

So whaddya think? Writing soundtracks are by default longer, or do you keep yours short?

A Year Goes By

2011-07-25T11:04:00.000-04:00

Today is the official one-year anniversary of two special arrivals in my life:

Those early days were stressful. Since they were less than a month old, I still had to bottle feed and stimulate them. Mack was terribly difficult to feed with the bottle--I'd have to stretch him out on his little back feet until he was standing all the way up before he'd latch on. But they were so, so darling.

And look at them now. So big they don't even fit in one picture together anymore:

And now, of course, they have another friend:

Is there such thing as too much animal love? Of course not.

Now I'm just counting the days until the felines get a canine companion... :)

I Have a Headache, and Other Things That Get in the Way

2011-07-21T13:02:00.000-04:00

Pretty much the only thing that is absolutely guaranteed to keep me from writing is a headache. Not just a niggler, but something that's at least a 4 on the 1-10 scale. I suppose it's the combined force of staring at the backlit computer screen, thinking too hard, and hunching my shoulders that makes it so unbearable.

I could say that I've had a headache for the past week, but that would only be partially true. I have had a headache for at least the past four or five days, but it's not been so debilitating. Coffee, Claritin, and Excedrin Migraine seem to keep it well enough in check (allergies, I guess).

So even though I was all chomping at the bit to start writing again once I had my life straightened out, I wrote 1600 words one night and promptly stopped it. I moped around a couple days, then started playing some more Dragon Age II hardcore, then decided I'd start a new game in Dragon Age: Origins to play simultaneously since the story and romance options are better in it and that's all anyone cares about anyway...and those of you who don't play video games are gone now. Sorry about that.

Here's a note: playing 8+ hours of Dragon Age and then watching 2 episodes of True Blood back-to-back will give you some odd dreams.

A thought: Joe Manganiello is one of the best-looking men on television. And his last name is hard to spell.

Here's a secret, and judge me as I judge you: I've always secretly snickered when people talked about their characters talking to them. I've always owned my characters. They do what I want them to do, and there's not much room for compromise. Until today, when a very strong female voice started narrating her opening chapter. It's not new--it's actually a premise I came up with two years ago and did nothing with. But damn, she was really going, and that voice was intoxicating.

So my headache is gone.

There's Always the Next Time

2011-07-15T07:45:00.001-04:00

I started writing again last night.

For those of you (who are you?) keeping track, it's been almost three months since I put hands to keyboard for anything other than a tweet or Facebook status update.

Sure, sure--moving, unpacking, stress, stress, company, stress. But it was always there, niggling--you know?

Here's the part I forgot: intimidation.

Damn, it's intimidating to've been out of the game for this long. I've had this great want to start revisions on my novel FOUR, but it's all been in my head. And sure, I did tons of plotting and planning--made that part pretty easy when I wrote my skeleton plot outline for the revision. I even figured out how to capitalize on the best parts of what my draft holds and keep a lot of the good stuff. That's big for me, as I'm usually a "scrap it all and start over" type of reviser. Obviously, I've never actually revised anything.

So I'd been psyching myself out for the past two days about actually starting writing again. See, I need to gut the first third of the draft and write all new material.

But that involves...writing.

Eventually, I lit my candles, started my A Perfect Circle station on Pandora, and figured out a decent starting sentence. After all, it doesn't really matter how great it is this time. This is just another draft, isn't it. And there's always the next round of edits. The perfect image that will eventually come.

Everything's a placeholder, until it isn't.

Yeah.

How about this instead?:

That's Ben Bass, who currently stars as Sam Swarek on one of my favorite TV shows, Rookie Blue. He's not a classically handsome dude, but his character is smokin'. Sexy, funny, brooding, yet intensely passionate. The whole package. He's basically the man I'd like my male protagonist to be. With a ponytail.

Happy writing, friends.

Totally Totem

2011-07-13T08:51:00.000-04:00

So, how many of you have writing desk totems?

I have several:

Each one of them means something to me. It's the stuff I stare off into space at. Sometimes I pick them up or touch them (I'm a fairly tactile person). You can tell I have a predilection for birds. I'm probably going to have to buy more, since I can no longer get the double-window, dual-birdfeeder view like I could at my old office. Something about watching them interact has always helped keep my brain functioning. They were my real totems, I guess... *sigh*

So what about you? What are your little desk inhabitors?

The Doing

2011-07-11T07:45:00.001-04:00

If you had told me ten years ago that I would one day thrive on routine, I would have laughed. A decade ago Summer loved spontaneity and thrived on change. A decade later Summer craves structure in every part of her life.

This summer has turned out to be completely different than I'd expected. Even in May I had grand expectations of easy closing on the house, unpacking in a week and having a whole month before my dear friend arrived for his visit. A month of nesting, acclimating to home ownership, and most importantly, writing.

Suffice to say, none of that happened. Oh, I unpacked alright. Thank goodness for that impending arrival, too--it lit a fire under my ass like nothing else. I knew he couldn't care less what my house looked like, but I sure as hell did.

Now I'm unpacked and clean, my friend is leaving in the morning, and I'm looking at the calendar realizing that my days are rapidly spiraling towards their new beginning. When I start nursing school on August 16th, it will have been 2 years to the day since I got hurt at work. Two years of learning how to be a "housewife," how to be alone for 85% of the day, how to be my own best friend--and how to write like a full time author.

I went through stages of hating it. The first year was the worst, mostly because I was still so badly impeded by my injury, then surgery and post-surgery physical therapy, etc etc. Then things started improving. I began to enjoy my time at home, and I started taking advantage of all the time to write. Last year, I wrote 3 novels. I started blogging. I found some awesome online friends, and some of them have become in-person friends. I discovered that I could stay at home all the time and feel perfectly fulfilled.

And now nursing school is on the horizon. When I'm not in class, I'll either be working my new job or studying my ass off.

When will I write? How will my relationship evolve with this new change? Will my husband remember what it's like for me not to be the 100% home-keeper?

I've always been good at school. School, I can do. Textbooks, memorization, logging in the hours--that, I can handle.

It's the everything else that I'm afraid of. Since I've been at home, I've discovered a great well of writing discipline inside myself. I tapped it, and it still flows inside me, urging me to sit down at the keyboard and work. Writer. Revise. Anything. And the longer I've gone without it, the worse I'm feeling. Edgy, anxious, crabby on occasion. The novel always in the back of my head.

Yet I'm too structured to be able to devote the mental capacity to writing without having my home in order, without having my office setup the way I need it. And now I have company, which I wouldn't change for the world. As soon as my company leaves, I'll have 4 weeks left.

Four weeks to try to establish a new routine, only for that routine to disappear when school starts.

I'm nervous. I'm worried. I think obsessively about how things will be when school starts, how it will impact the life I've come to appreciate.

Nothing I can do it about it now, except start doing and stop thinking. Come Tuesday morning, I'm going to throw an entire summer's worth of work into my writing, just in case it's the last chance I get...

You're So Hypnotizing

2011-06-21T10:21:00.000-04:00

Hi Bloggy People!

Here I sit (did I mention I got a new desk chair? It's awesome), all sweaty from a fresh 30 Day Shred workout, drinking my big glass of water and contemplating the day ahead. It's the summer solstice, and it seems like I should do something special to celebrate, no? I mean, it's my namesake and all.

I bought 3 packs of bratwurst on sale yesterday. Mayhap grilling some brats will be proper celebration?

I also bought an additional bookshelf. Since two of my bookshelves got broken in the move, I decided the smart thing to do was to upgrade the smaller one so that not only do I have plenty of room for my current books, but I'll save some room for future growth.

I barely managed to squeeze all my books onto the 2 shelves I currently have, but it's sad and frightening, guys. I stacked the books on their sides, shelved them regularly then stacked books on top of those. Poor books.

Random thought: I'm almost ashamed to admit how many times I've listened to Katy Perry's song "E.T." over the past week. It's an earworm (alien?) of epic proportions.

Worrisome thought: Before we moved, I thought I'd have "all summer" to work on novel revisions. The truth is, I haven't touched it, and June is almost over. Nursing school starts August 11. Yowch.

The Truth: I let my cats knock my brand-new Christmas present digital camera on to the floor...er, a few times... It hasn't worked since February. I couldn't stand to tell my mother-in-law that I broke it in 2 months, so I ordered the exact same model, even though there were others that were cheaper and possibly better, though it's a good one. I should be getting it today or tomorrow, so I'll finally have some new pictures of the house, cats, and random things. Be afraid!

Ex
Tra
Terres
Trial....

Things That Make Me Say HMMMM

2011-06-15T07:36:00.001-04:00

I woke up at some point during the night and as is my want, swung my legs over the bed for a nocturnal bathroom visit, only to be doubled over by crippling pain. From my groin.

Okay, I went running yesterday, but it was at 7:00am. Then I spent an entire day being active: finishing the kitchen cabinet painting, moving stuff around, putting together a bookshelf, etc.

There wasn't even any hanky panky to explain this, but I somehow managed to pull a groin muscle in my sleep. WTF? Let's just say it's swollen, painful, and almost has a burning sensation from the pain (that sounds like an STD, kinda, doesn't it?), and when I try to move my right leg too far away from the left--ZOW! Going down, lady.

Speaking of lady, that reminds me of one of our house-buying debacles. I'm going to break them up as to not overwhelm you with the prospect of how incredibly unlucky two sweet people can be.

So it's Saturday afternoon and the cable/internet man shows up to do the install. The prior lines in the house are all old and no good, so he's going to be there for several hours. We show him the first spot in the living room where we'd like the cable line to come out of the wall (it's $60 for wall, $10 for floor. Redonkulous, innit?). So he grabs his drill with the seven-foot bit and goes to town drilling...only to 1) punch out through the wall in the carport, and 2) subsequently hit the concrete foundation. So now we have a hole in the side of our house.

Repeat this for both other rooms, but insert things like "floor joists" and "omg you just narrowly missed our air conditioner unit." It was a stressful time, compounded by the fact that he was incapable of telling us everything we needed at once. We're still moving in, dude. We consider things like "clothing" more important than our flat-screen. So we had to make 2 separate trips for the TV and modem.

And then, as he's leaving, he says, "Bye, lady."
Yup.

And now I will share some pictures of the house.

Just a small portion of a large backyard.

Living/dining room. Vaulted ceiling.

Mystery third room. Probably guest room?

Kitchen! Now with refrigerator and new paint & hardware on cabinets.

Master bathroom with sink that doesn't work and world's suckiest shower.

Front of house, with mound of dirt that needs to be removed pronto. And hornets.

It's All A Whirlwind

2011-06-13T07:45:00.000-04:00

The short of it: in the new house. One of the craziest, most stressful long weekends EVER.

Juicy details, coming soon!

It's Going to Be Legen--Wait For It!--

2011-06-09T07:00:00.003-04:00

--dary!

OMG I'm buying a house today!

*freak out*

*run in circles*

For the record, I probably wouldn't be this excited/apprehensive if the road to this milestone hadn't been so fraught with disaster! But we made it, and at 10am EST, hubby and I will be signing our stack o'paper.

Woo!

Things I Have Done Since Moving

2011-06-01T15:09:00.000-04:00

1. Sweat. A LOT. Even sitting in the air conditioning. Today our heat index is 100, but at least the humidity is giving us a break at 42%.

2. Eat. Also a lot. My in-laws' place is a haven for the hungry, or those of us who eat out of boredom.

3. Pet Cats. I am currently alone in the house with 6 cats. I won't lie--I wish they were all mine. Except for the one mean one:

Actual picture of Mean Cat, circa Christmas 2010.

Sub-point to 3. Clean up cat vomit. The Munchkin cat that I gifted my in-laws with 2 years ago is a (not) lean, (not) mean vomiting machine:

And since we temporarily moved our mammoth couch into the living room, Herbie has taken up residence on it, thereby gracing it with his puke. Thanks, buddy. That's gratitude for rescuing him from the shelter, I guess.

4. Almost stepped on a snake. I like to walk around barefoot. Especially outside. This was a detriment day before yesterday, when I came within 2 inches of putting my foot down on a three-foot king snake. I screamed a girly little scream, splashed some of my beverage out of my glass, and then giggled.

5. Talked to my mortgage broker many times a day. We're in the last stage of the house-buying, and now we're talking more than I talk to my husband during the day.

6. Thought about starting revisions on my novel and promptly decided I'm too frazzled. Does this really need elaboration?

7. Bought a new mattress. What we used to sleep on was 15 years old, being saved by a 2-inch Tempur-Pedic topper. Memorial Day gave us 40% off an awesome mattress that is basically going to be like sleeping on a well-supported cloud.

8. Checked out a ton of books. I'm bored out of my wits, so I might as well give in and read all day, draped in cats. I'm embracing it, folks. Soon you won't receive mail from me without there being a dozen cat hairs inside the envelope.

9. Thought incessantly about the house and wished we were moving in already. Rinse & repeat.

What have you been up to lately? Please write long, detailed answers. I'm bored here.

Rode Hard and Put Up Wet

2011-05-25T09:33:00.000-04:00

That probably doesn't apply to this post, but I really wanted to use it as my title.

1. Thank you for all the kind, supportive comments on my self-indulgent post from Monday! I'm feeling much better about things now. I've reserved a U-Haul truck for Saturday at 8 AM; we're moving out of this apartment this weekend, whether it's to our house or to my in-laws' house. I have a plan now, so I feel loads better.

2. I have a lot more hardcore packing to do in order to move by Saturday at 8 AM. Because of this, and the moving stuff, and if we do move into my in-laws' for a few days, I won't be blogging again until things are settled. I may still comment and lurk, but nothing from me.

3. I still haven't watched the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. What is wrong with me?!?!

4. I think my sweet little boy cat, who's been neutered since he was 8 weeks old, sprayed in my house yesterday. I was livid. Thanks for waiting until the last few days we're here, jackhole! In his defense, I think the packing and the new cat outside is stressing him out.

5. I'm now officially over 500 followers. I know numbers aren't everything, or even anything, really, but I am humbled and quite frankly surprised that 500 people have decided to follow my blog. I hope I can at least make you smile from time to time, because I'm sure as hell not making anyone informed. :)

So, this is it. Hopefully the next time words appear on this webpage, I'll be a home owner residing in my new pad. Woo!

I Wanna Know

2011-05-23T08:01:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to think that the stress of not knowing what your living situation will be not only trumps, but also magnifies all other stress. The smallest things suddenly become Very Important OMG, and I run around thinking How Is This All Going To Work Out?

I don't have a closing date. My contract says on or before June 1. We're moving 45 miles away, so we'd really been hoping to have several days to trickle it out over, especially since there are some minor painting things we'd like to do before all our stuff is there. Our landlord has a family waiting to move in to our apartment.

My in-laws are going to let us crash with them temporarily, if need be, and that's where my worries start to pile up. What will I do with our furniture? How will our now THREE cats get along with their THREE cats? Especially the stray whom I haven't gotten neutered yet because I was waiting until we moved so he'd have an indoor place to recover? What about all our food in the fridge/freezer?

*stress*

And then I started having writing angst. I finished reading through my first draft of Four, talked over some revision idea with Evan, and then began to wonder if this was really the novel I want to put my heart and soul into right now. At this point, with all my other stress, I can't even differentiate between legit concerns and plain ol' fear.

Also, the mosquitoes are here in Georgia. I'm a mosquito magnet like you wouldn't believe. And yesterday it reached 95, and they're showing temps in the 90's all week.

I'm sorry if this sounds complainy. Sometimes it's nice to write it out. I just really want to know something.

However, in happy news, I noticed that I'm just shy of 500 followers! Holy moses! Never thought I'd see that day. You guys are one of the most integral parts of my routine now, and frankly I have a hard time remember life BB (before Blogger). Not sure if I can afford to run a contest per norm...mayhap I shall send a random box of packed stuff to a lucky person! ;)

Evil Cats, Evil Books

2011-05-18T11:48:00.001-04:00

Most days I'm pretty sure my cat Mack is human-level intelligent and capable of reason. And that he uses his intelligence for EVIL. EEEEVILLLLL...

The apartment in which I will not be living much longer has ledges built into the walls around chair-rail height. These ledges are about 5 inches wide--perfect width for cat butts.

Mack the boy cat lives to walk across my desk. Over and over, blocking my view. Occasionally stopping to try and eat my plants. Knocking my candles onto the floor. Stepping on whatever is on my desk--paper, sandwich, whatever. All in the pursuit of looking out the windows...

This is pretty much our daily routine. Especially if I'm eating--the effort goes up a few notches.

I've decided that I'm tired of waiting for my hubby to finish my rough draft of FOUR before I read it. He has 13% left, and that's close enough, right? So I'm going to start reading today. Let's see, it's been...28 days since I finished? Yes. So, a February has gone by, and I think that's enough time.

Last night I started to chicken out about revisions. I'm a big coward when it comes to revisions--I get so many ideas that they start snarling in my head until I feel like beating it against the wall. That's usually when I scrap the revision idea and start on a new draft.

But not this time. Thankfully, my stalwart CPs (Lola, Portia, and Tara) are there to talk me away from the ledge. Last night I kept my breakdown limited to just my hubby, and he snapped me out of it well enough, but I know I'm going to need hand-holding. Turns out I'm a little bitch baby when it comes to revisions. (I got the phrase "bitch baby" from Grey's Anatomy and I love it.)

Oh, and what's all this about the world ending and such on Saturday? I have plans on Saturday, thanks.

It's That Day Again!

2011-05-16T08:00:00.003-04:00

Today is my 3rd wedding anniversary! Sometimes it's hard to believe three years have gone by, and other times it feels like forever (in a good way). We've been together for over 6 years now, and *insert mushy sentimentalism*.

This picture is a good explanation of my life with my husband, Evan:

This photo was taken at the wedding of our friend on the left (the blond one), about a month before the wedding of the friend in the middle (the redhead). Both of these guys were at our wedding, and they're Evan's 2 best friends from his youth. Excellent times were had at that wedding, and truth be told, I was so drunk in this picture I don't even remember it being taken.

Fun times with life!

Out of curiosity, I looked up my blog post from this time last year. Turns out for my anniversary last year, we watched 11 episodes of LOST and grilled steak & veggies. Sweet!

Also according to that post, I had just finished reading 2 excellent books and had just seen Iron Man 2. Living large, huh?

We saw THOR for this anniversary, and I also just finished 2 good books. Man, my life is predictable, huh? :)

Happy Monday!

How Writing is Gardening: a post in pictures

2011-05-13T13:38:00.000-04:00

Inception

Outline

Skeleton draft

First draft

Revisions

Final draft.

Okay...so maybe this was just an excuse to post pictures of my garden's transformation over the course of 1 year.

Your Knowledge is Greater Than My Knowledge

2011-05-11T14:28:00.000-04:00

In personal news: the house buying is coming along nicely! We had our inspection done earlier this week, and while we're going to have to replace the furnace/AC unit, we're still moving forward with the purchase. Our latest closing date has been set as June 1, but we're really hoping to close earlier so we'll have at least a week to make the move.

So if all goes well, this will be my first house! It's not much to look at from the outside right now, but I have big plans for landscaping and some repainting. The inside is very cute with some unique characteristics, though. And the backyard is huge! When I was there for the inspection, I watched two bunnies running around in the forested part of the yard--so cute!

I've been haphazardly packing the apartment, trying to keep some things out and unsure what to do with others...so basically, the apartment is a wreck with boxes everywhere. I like to have neat surroundings whenever I'm working on something big writing-wise, so the chaos isn't helping me think.

I'm still waiting on Evan to finish reading my rough draft, and he's getting closer. I've slowly started my story bible. So far I've got some of the world-building and a lot of the mythology, but nothing much else.

This is where I need help: I've never revised before. I have three messy novels sitting on my hard drive, all worthy ideas, all still untouched because I'd rather write a new messy one than try to clean up an old. But I really want to polish FOUR up and try my hand at sending it out, thus revision looms.

I have Donald Maass' The Fire in Fiction and The Breakout Novelist and am reading through them again with revision in mind, but I'd welcome any and all information you guys think might help me. Personal methods, links, websites, worksheets--anything!

And because it's been so long, a picture of my fur babes:

I was dyeing my hair. They were supervising.

Fit For Life

2011-05-10T07:45:00.002-04:00

First off--my 25th birthday was a resounding success! Older brother and I headed to Panther Creek like I'd indicated. We did not, however, run. We hiked at a very steady clip. The entire trail, there and back, is 7 miles of absolutely gorgeous scenery. We've had amazing weather, and Saturday was no exception.

Some photos (my camera died almost right off the bat, but I was able to resurrect it for the end photo):

My brother asked for a less-cheesy smile. This is what I gave him instead.

The photo doesn't do it justice, but this entire bend of the river is walled off by stone. So cool!

This is at the very end of the hike--quite the precarious climb down, but worth it!

All in all, a fun day in nature. I was (and still am) super sore afterward, though. We followed up with lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant and cooled off with frozen margaritas.

Recently I've decided that Evan and I need to add some more fitness into our life. Since he got the desk job, his life has become very sedentary. And while I run several times a week, I'm still not as active as I'd like to be.

Neither of us needs to lose massive amounts of weight, but he's lost a lot of muscle that's turned into some flab, and I've got some softness in places I'd rather not.

I've already been slowing transitioning us off red meat and more into grains (like quinoa, which I can't get enough of), but it's not been enough. Last year we did a cleanse in which we cut out all processed foods, white flour, sugar, carbs, dairy, etc. We felt really good afterward, but pretty quickly fell back into our unhealthy eating routine.

I like to cook. A lot. But I'm severely lacking in motivation most days, and our grocery store produce section sucks big time--and there's no where else to shop. Therefore, we have a tendency to go out to eat when we don't feel like cooking, and we all know what a trap that is.

Since our move to the new house is fairly imminent, I'm trying to empty our pantry, so I've been cooking at home about 90% of the time the past few weeks, and the difference we feel even there is amazing. I always try to cook healthy. We don't have snacks hanging around the house, except for stuff like nuts and fruit. So I figured it's gotta be the fast food junket we've been enjoying.

I follow Women's Health Magazine (@WomensHealthMag) on Twitter, and today I saw that they're cross promoting the Fit For Life Summer Challenge with Men's Health.

Check it out! There are some interesting things to think about in there, plus workouts for all kinds. I don't know if we're actually going to partake in the challenge itself, but I printed out the eating guide and some of the workouts.

Are you active? How do you try to incorporate fitness into your daily routine?

It's a Numbers Thing.

2011-05-06T08:00:00.001-04:00

I never used to listen to songs on repeat while writing certain scenes in my WIPs, but things changed during FOUR. A lot of things, actually.

In many ways, FOUR is a first novel for me. It's the first novel I've written that did not start during NaNoWriMo. It's the first novel that I approached with almost-professional dedication. It's the first novel that I outlined, and due to that, the first novel that I never hit a roadblock.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this recently, but I actually started writing FOUR in January of '10, around the same time I started this blog. When I brainstormed ideas with husband about it, it was originally intended to be a rewrite of the '09 NaNo novel, but soon took on such a life of its own that that didn't work anymore (thankfully--I've come up with a much better redirection for that novel).

For three weeks in that January, I wrote 2k per day, without fail. At the end of the stretch, I had 33,200 words. I can't remember now why I set it aside--I think I wanted to finish writing the NaNo novels I'd left hanging, which I did. Over the year, I kept reading through it from time to time, and each time I read I'd be pleasantly surprised by the content.

So, in early February of this year, I sent the 33k to two of my CPs and asked for their brutal opinions--was it worth continuing, or should I scrap it? Thankfully, the answer was yes--keep going.

Out of empirical interest, I kept a note beside my desk of how many words I added each day that I wrote. It's fun now looking over the list and seeing the numbers jump. I officially started writing again on February 10. By March 10, I'd added 30,000 new words. And by April 10, I'd added another 20k. And of course, I finished on April 21.

Now, I didn't actually write every day during those roughly 2 months. In fact, I had several long stretches where I didn't write at all, which is another reason I'm glad I kept the list, since I only wrote the days that I added wordcount. According to El List, I actually only wrote for 32 days. In 32 days, I wrote 63,263 words, an average of 1,977 words each day.

This is me, riding the bull.

I'm proud of that. I feel like with this novel that I've finally proved to myself that I can do it--I can write a full-length draft without the hype and competition of NaNoWrimo, with just the BICHOK method and Taurean determination.

I got lots of practice telling my husband that I was going to be writing instead of playing video games or doing something with friends. Not always an easy choice, but one that you see dedicated writers making again and again.

Anyway, since this post is all dry and about numbers and stuff, I wanted to share the official repeat stats on my FOUR playlist. Unlike some of my other works, I actually listened more to iTunes than to Pandora for the writing of this novel. I just couldn't find quite the right Pandora station (though my Delerium station got a good workout).

The official playlist has 63 songs for 4.9 hours of playtime. I rarely listened to the whole thing, as there were songs on there that ended up not being quite right.

So, here are the top ten songs and their repeat numbers:

"The Day the World Went Away"-- Nine Inch Nails (38)
"Degausser"--Brand New (34)
"Undisclosed Desires"--Muse (28)
"Imma Be"--Black Eyed Peas (24--this was mostly for the awesome bass beat)
"Sabotage"--Beastie Boys (22)
"Dragula"--Rob Zombie (19)
"Knights of Cydonia"--Muse (18)
"Uprising"--Muse (17)
"2-1"--Imogen Heap (15)
"United States of Eurasia"--Muse (15)

Seeing a Muse trend? Me too.

Thanks for suffering through this numbers post!

What's your number one repeated song on iTunes?

Story Bible & Trail Runs & Houses

2011-05-03T09:39:00.001-04:00

Late last night, I finally got the email I've been waiting for (for 3 weeks)--we got the executed contract back on the house we're trying to buy, so we can finally move forward with the inspection/appraisal/etc. We're very happy about all this.

My birthday is Saturday. I'll be 25. Since hubby works for a college, and their graduation happens to be Saturday as well, he's going to be gone pretty much all day. I made a sad status thingie on Facebook, and my big brother casually mentions that he'll come over to keep me company. So then I (stupid, stupid!) say, "Are you really going to come over? We can go on a trail run or something."

My brother ran cross country all through college, and while I had my track & field days in high school, that was a long time ago, man. I started running against last summer, strictly on the treadmill, then had to stop around September. Started back up in January and have been running steadily (outside) an average of three days a week since then. However, my cardio endurance is still crap.

Big brother has been pestering me for us to run together for ages now. Might as well die of a heart attack on my birthday, right? I mean, I did just get CPR certified. Maybe I can give myself compressions.

But the upside is there are beautiful places to run here. Like this:

Panther Creek

Anyway. We'll see how it goes. I always thought I'd die before I reached 25, so maybe this run will do me in.

(I was trying to find a good segue picture for "writing related," and when I Googled that phrase, four pictures of Twitter came up. Ha. And now this will serve as my segue.)

My hubby is still reading through the rough draft of FOUR, and I'm getting a bit antsy. So I thought maybe I should work on some sort of story bible? Like, a 3-ring binder with all the pertinent information that I love to forget.

Do any of you guys do that? Got any tips for me?

Thank You and How to Help

2011-05-02T07:45:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure I can adequately express my thanks for all the comments left on last week's post about my personal experience living through a tornado. It wasn't an easy thing for me to write, but I'm glad I did.

Several people who live on the West Coast mentioned that there is hardly any coverage over there about the disaster.

One of our own in the blogging community, Courtney Barr (the Southern princess), lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which was one of the harder hit towns. She and her family survived just fine, but are surrounded by the ruins of hundreds of others' lives.

Courtney sent out an email yesterday to many of her friends and acquaintances in the blogging/writing world. If you didn't receive it, this is the text:

Most of you know me as The Southern Princess. Well it just so happens that on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 my Kingdom's surrounding lands was devastated by an EF4/EF5 Tornado.

It destroyed the main sections of Tuscaloosa, my city. It erased neighborhoods from the city map. We have over 1000 injured and 475 missing as of today - that is just my city. Alabama was the hardest hit of the 7 states affected by this storm. Due to national coverage of this breathtaking, in the ugliest sense of the word, tornado my city is receiving so much aide from other states & the national guard. Well, we are not the only town hurting. I was raised in a small rural town in south Alabama. I know what its like to only have 1 grocery store, a few locally owned eateries and very little access to larger cities. There are towns like that affected by this storm. Hackleburg, Alabama is destroyed. They are not easy to reach from the outside, they had only one grocery store and one gas station. Their government are gone and the people there need our help. Sawyerville, Snoddy, Phil Campbell, Gordo, Reform...the list can go on. These rural communities NEED our help.

I created a blog called ALL 4 ALABAMA http://all4alabamarelief.blogspot.com/ and another email address to handle communications all4alabamarelief@yahoo.com .

I am hoping that through all of us we can possibly set up an auction much like Do the Write Thing for Nashville did. These people need us. I am sitting right now comfortably within 4 walls, with my dog at my side and my husband safe & sound. Two streets over, literally, everything is gone. No houses stand, no laundry flaps in the breeze, no music from bedrooms, no mailboxes, no children playing in the streets - the children sift through what is left and parents smile as they are thankful to be alive.

I did not know where to start or how to help, when the outpouring of help came for Tuscaloosa & the radio calls for these small towns began to flood in, I could not stop thinking about how I could use my own resources. I have been welcomed into this writing community and have found such great comfort with each of you - please if you can help, if you know someone who can donate goods to auction, services, information - anything is welcomed and appreciated.

I am new to this (I am normally just bidding with everyone else) I want to help. If you cannot, I completely understand. Just email any ideas, direction, etc. to the new email account. I will be working on the site in the meantime.

No matter what the outcome of this endeavor thank you all for reading, for welcoming, for being such amazing people.

Lots of Love,

Courtney

Please support Courtney--and the true recipients of her outreach, the victims--in any way you can.

I found another group setting up an auction: Help Write Now. This is being spearheaded by this group of well-known people.

As always, the American Red Cross is set up for simple donation. From their website:

If you would like to help, there are several ways that people can make a donation to support American Red Cross Disaster Relief: Visit redcross.org to donate online, call 1-800-REDCROSS, or by texting REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Contributions may also be sent to your local American Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013.

Additional information is available on www.redcross.org.

Again, thank you for your outpouring on my personal situation, and please consider finding some small way to help others who are like I was 17 years ago.

Tornadoes--personal account

2011-04-28T09:40:00.001-04:00

Last night, the lives of thousands of people changed. Sometimes we get so caught up in our day-to-day lives and stresses that we forget, or never even realized, that everything can be taken from us in less than thirty seconds.

On March 27, 1994, my family and I were hit by two tornadoes at once. My grandparents were over for lunch after church--it was Palm Sunday. The temperature was around 84 degrees and the humidity was astronomical, but no rain. No thunderstorms. Just heavy clouds and that lingering, oppressive heat.

We sat around the living room talking and laughing, and I remember my mom and Meme (grandmother) started talking about tornadoes--in the abstract. We lived in a little 3 bedroom ranch on a crawlspace. They were wondering if we should go into the crawlspace in the event of a tornado.

About two minutes later, all of the trees in the front yard whipped toward the ground, leaves flipping upside down. The sky took on the ugly green cast that only a tornado heralds.

And then, over the hill directly in front of our house, a massive, two-tailed tornado rose up.

I was seven, turning eight in about a month. I remember my grandmother scream "get in the hallway!" She got in first, followed by me and my brother. My dad, remembering some old wives tale, ran into the two bedrooms and opened the windows--hoping to alleviate air pressure or something.

Then he got next to my mom in the hall. Our hall wasn't long enough for six people. My grandfather--Papa--was standing up at the end of the hallway in the living room, facing the tornado.

I don't think I'll ever forget this, and I'll admit that I still cry every time I talk about it (I'm crying right now). I watched my dad stand up to grab Papa, and in that moment I screamed "Daddy, no!"

And then the tornado hit.

We found out afterward that the main tornado was an EF-4, but another smaller tornado had come at us from the other side, and they just so happened to meet in the middle.

We all remember different things from the heart of the storm. It only lasted for about fifteen seconds. My parents and grandparents heard the freight train sound. I didn't, and neither did my brother.

My mom heard her 55-gallon fish tank explode.
I heard silverware rattling in the drawers, like someone was opening and slamming them shut.
The floor joist snapped between me and my brother, and he said he thought he was being thrown out into the sky. The floor sank just enough for part of my head to get trapped beneath the bookshelf in front of us.

When the tornado passed, people were there immediately. I'm not even sure how they got there so fast. Our neighbors, of course--and total strangers. Some said they saw the tornado hit our house from the road. All I know is that within a few minutes, people I'd never seen before in my life were helping us crawl out of the rubble of our house.

A stranger carried me out of the rubble--I was barefoot--and into a clear section of the yard beside my brother. I don't remember this, but I was screaming, over and over. My mom slapped me to make me stop. Power lines were down all over the yard. Our rabbit was dead.

We have an album of the house, but I only have one picture scanned on the computer. This was a few days later:

Most people couldn't believe that we had all lived through the tornado. The only injury was my grandfather, whose ankle got broken. They carted him up the road in a wheelbarrow to meet an ambulance that couldn't make it, due to all the debris. Our cat turned up about a month later--she'd gone almost feral in the meantime. And one of the goldfish went on to live for five more years, even though he'd lived on a pile of gravel for three days before someone found him.

We had to burn everything we owned. Looking back now, we know that we'd been given false information, but at the time didn't want to take the risk. The day that they burned our stack of stuffed animals, Mom took us out for lunch. The first stuffed animal I got afterward was a little dragon from the therapist both of us kids were seeing for post-traumatic stress.

What I'm saying is this:

What happened last night, even to those who were fortunate not to have lost lives, is going to change them forever. For about a year after the tornado, my mom would burst into tears whenever it would just rain. It's only been within the last few years that I haven't gone into hiding or gotten extremely nervous during a strong thunderstorm. Two years ago, I was stuck at work during a tornado watch, and some ignorant person thought it was funny and said there was a funnel cloud outside. I didn't know they were joking, and I had a full-on panic attack--couldn't breathe, almost fainted, shaking and crying and moaning. Two years ago.

I will never forget the kindness of strangers. The outpouring of help--people who'd never seen us, didn't know our story stopped to help when we began cleaning up the rubble.

The Salvation Army and the American Red Cross provided everything for us in the months after. I'll never forget that, either.

My family was fortunate to have escaped relatively unscathed. Things are just things, after all. They were all replaced eventually.

I know some of what the people in Alabama and northwest Georgia are going through right now, but as traumatizing and horrifying as just the tornado was for us, I can't even imagine adding in the pain of losing someone with it. It's the kind of thing you will never, ever get over.

I don't know what my point is. This post wasn't easy for me to write. I don't like to talk about the tornado, because it still upsets me, makes me shake and cry, like I said.

But despite all the horror, we learned a lot of amazing lessons in humanity. As vile as the world sometimes seems, there are people out there who have good, true hearts, who won't hesitate to help a family in need, to carry a screaming little girl out of the ruins of her home.

Be one of those people.

On Soulless Things

2011-04-27T09:32:00.000-04:00

Do any of you fans of The Office recall the episode "Safety Training"? The one where they have the first aid instructor come in, and Dwight ends up "harvesting the organs" of the dummy and then wearing its face like Hannibal Lector? One of the funniest scenes of the show, in my opinion.

Well, today it's my turn. I'm getting some hot dummy action.

I Googled pictures of CPR dummies, but they were all so creepy in their own ways that I couldn't bear to bring them into this safe place. I have this fear of dolls that kinda links with my fear of clowns (my cousins had a doll clown that was pretty much Satan in the batting). With that fear in mind, I'd kinda like to let a couple of the dummies die, but I doubt the instructor would see my point of view.

Even worse, today is basically the last feasible day for any of us nursing students to get this CPR certification, and the instructor said the class is really full. So I'm going to be stuck in a room full of dummies for about four and a half hours.

Oh, boy. I can't wait.

Oh no, I lied! This is the "Baby Anne Four-Pack."

Just what I'd want to see on a Wednesday morning. Four soulless dolls.

Also, this pack costs $369.00.

Speaking of soulless things, Evan and I started watching The Walking Dead this week. Besides the obvious interest, it's also filmed in Atlanta. And it's always fun to watch things filmed near where you live, right? We've only finished the first half of season one, but so far I give it five stars. The creepiness of the first episode was on par with the best zombie movies, which made husband uncomfortable at the prospect of an entire show like that, but the good news is that it focuses more on the characters and their situation after the first episode. I highly recommend!

In other thoughts, I somehow managed to let the household run out of both milk and bodywash. Those aren't related.

Happy hump day!

Plans. I Has Them.

2011-04-25T07:45:00.001-04:00

If you've never used Wordle after completing a manuscript, let me encourage you to try it out. The concept is pretty basic: copy and paste your document into the program, and it will show you a word cloud of the most frequent fliers in your selection. Once the cloud is displayed, you can remove things like your main and subsidiary characters' names in order to get a truer look at the repeat offenders.

I was fairly surprised by some of the words that I saw come up this time:

I don't know how well you can see that, other than my biggest no-no's. I think it's a link, if you click on the picture.

Obviously, you can see that I like my prepositions, as well as just. What a sneaky word, right?

However, I was really surprised to see so many body parts appear on the cloud:

hands
feet
heart
arm
skin
throat
fingers
hair

I guess I have anatomy on the brain.

Moving along...

On my last post, Shain Brown asked me a few questions that it's time for me to face.

Might we ask your plans--contemporary or self-publishing? If you plan on querying, when do you foresee that process starting?

I have a more complex answer for this question that gets deeper into my personal feelings about who I am as a writer and where I see myself going, but the simple answer is yes.

Oh wait, it wasn't a yes-or-no question.

I don't plan on going the self-publishing route. I'm going to slug it out in the query trenches with everyone else. Maybe it's because I've always thought the phrase "slush pile" sounded rather refreshing--I love those Hush Puppie Icees/Slushies. If I'm in a slush pile, can it be blue raspberry flavored? Or Dr. Pepper? Thanks.

More seriously, though, I hope to start querying over the summer. However, I will not send out a letter until I'm absolutely ready. I have a lot of revisions to do on my novel, and then it will go into the amazing hands of my critique group. After that, I have some savvy beta readers standing by to poke any final holes in the book. Only after it's gone through all that, and I've decided that I won't just scrap it, then I'll turn to the query process.

Getting ready to query is going to take a lot of work for me. I've done absolutely zero agent research. I have no clue who my bright star might be.

I also have some fears about the timing of my query. I certainly don't expect to be snapped up right away, but if I did, then I'd probably be facing some revision deadlines during my first semester of nursing school. That scares the shit out of me, quite frankly. So then I think maybe I should wait. And then I remember the slush pile.

Honestly, I'm a little frightened. But right now, my focus is still on the book. I'm not going to think about queries or agents or agent revisions until the book I have is as shiny as I can make it.

Then we'll talk.

BOW BEFORE ME*

2011-04-22T07:45:00.002-04:00

Hey, novel!

Yeah, you.

Guess what?

I typed THE END on your face!

So obviously, I finished my novel FOUR last night. Fittingly, this is the fourth novel that I have finished.

Official stats:

96,463 words (a few more after I spell checked. I like to cram words together. Must be because I was born in Germany.)

181 pages (I like to type single-spaced.)

I don't have the same elation that I did when I finished my first novel, but I am still UBER HAPPY. This is definitely the cleanest draft I've put out. It was hard as hell, but I think I'll appreciate my own efforts when it's time to revise.

Revisions are still going to suuuuuck, though. I like to introduce idea threads, then forget about them. Whoops!

But, hey. I'm done. And now I finally feel like I can crit and read and do things without my novel looming over my shoulder. At least for a few weeks, right? Yeah.

I wrote this post right after I finished writing, so the brain is spent. I have many thoughts about the writing of this one, and I always like to Wordle my work, so I'll have a few posts next week.

Until then, pop it like it's hot.

And happy Easter!

*not you. My novel.

I Like The Way You Do That Right Thurr

2011-04-13T07:55:00.001-04:00

An innocent Facebook post implanted a bunch of early '00's rap songs into my head last night. I dropped it like it's hot and shook my tailfeather until the novelty wore off and I remembered I wasn't 17 anymore.

(This is the link, but be warned that it's irreverent. Click at your own risk. )

Moving along, I have good news! Despite our rough start, husband and I are finally under contract on a house! It has doors and rooms and a yard and everything. We are all like :D around here.

Especially this guy:

This is Monty, a stray kitty that decided to adopt us about a week ago. I called the vet on his rabies tag, but they never got back in touch with me, so I take it to mean either they can't be bothered to contact his owners, or his owners just don't care. He's unneutered, so before we officially add him to the clan, I'm going to take him to the vet to get tested and snipped, and then he's going to be the number one vole killer at the new house.

segue

I mocked up a blog/website for my university's fine arts & literary magazine as my end-of-semester project. Give it a look and tell me what you think, eh? Mountain Laurels

segue

I think I strained my Achilles tendon or something running the other day. I stumbled and felt pain, finished my run, and have been limping with increasing pain. Not cool, leg. Not cool.

Also, this:

Happy Hump Day! Hump your neighbor.

Or not. Use your discretion.

The Name's the Thing.

2011-04-11T07:45:00.005-04:00

Okay, well, I didn't make my big fat goal of finishing the first draft of FOUR by last night. However, I did get a ton of writing done that I probably otherwise would not have, let's be honest.

As of last night, my word count is 82,300. I added almost 10,000 words over the weekend! I'm estimating possibly 7-10k more to tie it up, but we'll see. Somehow this novel turned into a beast.

So I have one of those writer questions for you, concerning the names of my main characters. Like all of you, no doubt, I struggle when it comes to naming my characters. In FOUR, which is an urban fantasy, both my main characters are Fae born-n-bred. To my thinking, that indicates they shouldn't have your run-of-the-mill human name.

I didn't want to get all Zychdi Bnett with my naming (unless you like that one?? just kidding), so I turned to my favorite baby names website and searched all baby names from the British Isles until I found some I liked.

Most of the urban fantasy books I've read feature a human (or mostly human) main character with a very human name, and for good reason.

I think I've found a good balance between "different" yet still "accessible," but you tell me. These are the names of my two main characters:

Mairwen Keill (F)
Torrin Shanley (M)

Whaddya think? If it helps, I imagine Mairwen sort of like prettiest Claire Danes, with long hair. Torrin, I'm still searching for, but I did find the cover of a romance novel that I liked muchly:

uhhh...sorry, was I asking something?

You Heard It Here.

2011-04-07T10:10:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I avowed that I will, to the best of my ability, finish my novel FOUR by Sunday night. I'm going to be a writing maniac:

I'll be kickin' it on the dog house.

Last night I wrote 4200 words and finally made it into the final act of the book! This was a scene I've been looking forward to writing for ages--takes place at a revival, but there's something not quite right about these people.

It's been a long time since I've shared some writing, so here's a (rough) clip from what I wrote last night:

     The evangelist cupped his hands around the male’s head and lifted his face toward the ceiling. One of the spotlight beams cut a swath across his face, and for a split second, Torrin thought he saw a shadow moving beneath the sallow skin, but then the evangelist was speaking again. His voice so low, so silky.
     “Three weeks ago this boy’s mother called me, begging for me to pray to the Lord for strength. Her boy, her baby boy, had gone missing.”
     Torrin frowned and leaned forward. Beside him, Vinita did the same.
     “We prayed—Lord, we lifted our voices to God Almighty and begged for this boy’s safe return. Jesus, please—please, bring him back!”
     All around them, the crowd murmured and responded with the amens and preach it’s he’d only thought happened in movies. The evangelist panted, a sheen of sweat shimmering on his brow as he slowly moved his gaze across the crowd.
     “And on the third night, God answered our cries. This boy came walking through the front door, just like we’d asked.”
     His voice pressed at Torrin, almost physical in its insistence for him to let it in, believe its words.
     “But he was not returned to us the same.” He cradled the boy’s head against his chest now, stroking one finger down a hollowed cheek. “The Devil had taken hold.”
     Moans and shouts rose from the crowd. The air thrummed with excitement, like they were here to witness blood sport instead of religion, and thirsted for the first crimson drop to shed on the ground. Torrin glanced to his right, then left. The same glazed expressions every way.
     “The Devil has taken hold,” the evangelist repeated himself, voice louder, “but tonight he will be gone!”
     Before his voice finished fading from the microphone’s ring, the male in the wheelchair suddenly sprang to life. His head snapped up, eyes peeling wide. His fingers clawed against his legs where the restraints locked him into place.
     The evangelist grasped the male’s head and thrust him further into the light.
     “You are of your father the Devil and his desire is your will.”
     The male bound to the wheelchair turned on the evangelist, snapping ferally at hands that jerked out of the way just in time. In the flash of movement, Torrin saw the tips of fangs beneath the male’s upper lip.

Undefinable

2011-04-06T08:00:00.001-04:00

I've been in a strange..mood, shall we call it?...these last few weeks. Not particularly bad, not particularly good, nor moderate.

Just...off.

I know it's in part due to the stress of trying to buy a house and watching each one slip through our fingers for one reason or another. I'm actually feeling better in that regard--I do know that, logically speaking, I'll get a house eventually.

Some is the nasty arrival of Spring allergies, and my forgetfulness about taking Claritin in the mornings, not after I've been running around outside all day and have a major headache.

A large part is a case of wicked nightmares and all-around odd dreams I've been plagued with lately. Serial killers in some, exes in others. Last night, I had a very realistic dream in which Santa Claus proved, irrefutably, that he existed. And as magical as that sounds, it was underscored with a hint of unease, discomfort--even fear.

To combat this lurking ennui, I've been pushing myself physically--running more and more each time, and now I've started up the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred workouts again. Yesterday while stretching post-run, I discovered that I'd burst some blood vessels in my calf.

Most of all, my writing has been suffering. I'm generally pretty good about pushing through blocks, just getting words down (thank you, English degree and papers whose deadlines don't care), but this time it's tougher. I'm so close to seeing the end, but so frustrated with the sound of my own Voice that I can't stand to see the sentences that I write. I keep telling myself it's just the rough draft, get it down, it can suck--all the usual mantras, but they aren't helping.

Fortunately, it's all still manageable. I think it's just "that time of year." Things are so close to changing, but you've gotta slog through the shit first, you know?

*** an attempt to end on a lighter note ***

Since I sorta broke my digital camera a while ago, we only had a disposable camera for our trip to Maryland a few weeks ago, and when we got them processed had a CD made too. Here are a few pictures of Calvert Cliffs State Park, where the beach is eroding and you can find fossils!

It was a 2 mile hike through woods and swamp to get there, but totally worth it! However, it was only around 55 degrees and super windy, so that wasn't as fun as it could have been. I did get in the water just for a second, and couldn't feel my feet for a while afterward...

Blogs, They Be a'Changin'

2011-04-04T08:00:00.002-04:00

Over the last few months, I've had a harder and harder time coming up with things to blog about. I've tried to keep this blog mostly writing-related, but I've never been one to give out advice (what do I know?), so the well ran dry long ago.

2011 is going to be a year fraught with huge changes for me, and I want my blog to encompass more of the elements of my life.

I'm starting nursing school this August, and it seems to be arriving with light speed. I got a packet in the mail yesterday with a checklist of everything I have to complete to cement my spot in the program--including CPR certification, drug test, background check, & a whole slew of immunizations/boosters, among other things. All by May 5th. Although the deadline is daunting, I was relieved to open the packet, because worry wort that I am, I was afraid that I may have somehow checked the "do not want to attend" box on my response to acceptance.

Anyway. I'll still be talking plenty about writing, because I still have big goals for myself this year with my project FOUR, but I'll be interspersing those blogs with other things near and dear to my heart.

So, obviously I have changed the name of my blog, but I will be changing the domain name. It's going to be the much-easier-to-type "http://summerfrey.blogspot.com." I tried changing it already and it disappeared from everywhere, so a little notice first. I'll probably go live on the new domain a week from today.

Woot!

Thangs 'n Suches

2011-03-30T07:45:00.004-04:00

Thanks for all the wise words and well-wishes regarding my irrational fear of returning to my neglected novel!

I got back on the horse, and we galloped around the countryside--no bucking and just a hair of braying.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to make my end-of-March deadline, but I'm okay with it, considering I lost two weeks. March has turned out to be hella stressful since adding the house-hunting business to the mix, though I'm hoping that will be resolved soon (please god).

In random news...

My sister-from-another-mister Hannah Kincade has joined the dark Twitter ranks! Follower her @WriterHKincade (and prepare yourself for any drawn-out, inappropriate [to some] conversations between us [and sometimes with friends])
The author who visited my university last week said that he thinks all characters need a secret. I'm not sure I agree with him, but he's the one with four books published, not me.
She'll probably kill me for mentioning this, but my uber-friend and writing partner L-O-L-A Lola SHARP's birthday is Friday. That's right, April Fool's Day! So show her some big bloggy love, because she deserves it!!

Class dismissed!

The Only Thing to Fear...

2011-03-25T09:46:00.001-04:00

I'm afraid of my novel.

Let me back up:

On February 10, I decided to blow the dust off my urban fantasy project, tentatively titled FOUR. Between then and March 10, I added a little over 30,000 words to the document. I let one of my critique partners read the roughness, and she liked it. She pumped me up with encouragement.

Then I joined the ninjas and was automatically part of a support group. High-fives and gentle butt-kicks all the way around--complete with weekly chats! Awesome, no?

I was holding pretty steady with an average 2k/day word count goal. I had the entire thing planned out, and I was excited to write it. I got myself to the climax of the second act, a part I'd been excited about writing since I came up with the plot points.

And then I went on vacation.

All good intentions of writing while away fell to the wayside. Vacation was stressful, but I bought Donald Maass's book The Fire in Fiction and have read most of it. Reading it made me feel part-validated, part-daunted. I'm on the right track in some places, and have a lot of work cut out in others. But it gave me some good ideas for immediate ways to improve the final third of my novel. So I was all excited to get back home and start writing.

But getting back from vacation is no vacation, right? First, it was a Monday, which meant I had class. And I also had to catch up on all the stuff that'd been left waiting while we were gone--grocery shopping, laundry, cat-related things, bills, errands. Not to mention hubby was still on vacation, so he was around the house to distract. Then on Tuesday, we were gone all day looking for houses. Ensuing house-related business totally sapped the rest of my energy.

To make a long story short, I haven't touched my WIP in two weeks now, and I'm a little scared to go back. I remember precisely where I left off, and it was a scene I was already a bit nervous to write--let alone come back to TWO WEEKS later. What if I was in a speed writing-induced haze? What if everything I wrote to this point totally blows and sucks all the joy I had for this novel out of me?

*headdesk*

Right.

Today I finally, finally have enough time to open up Word and check the damage. I've had my grapefruit, had my coffee, and the cats are napping.

Now or never...

House Hunters: Georgia

2011-03-22T07:00:00.003-04:00

So, remember last week when I shared the news that hubby and I put a contract on a house and was like WHOA! Tee-hee! House for me!!!

Yeah, life doesn't like it when I giggle a lot. So we found out later in the day that I posted that the house was, in fact, already under contract, despite what the listing agents' answering machine said, etc. So we lost out. It wasn't the first time this has happened to us, and I doubt it will be the last. Life likes to throw steaming poo wads at us from time to time, and after 25 years, my reflexes are sharp and nose dulled, so the ball keeps rolling, etc.

The first and third days we were in Maryland, we chose to hang around my brother in law's apartment and take it easy, mostly which entailed looking at houses online and streaming the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica on his 46-inch flat panel TV and surround sound system.

We knew that we'd be meeting up with our realtor again today, so we felt like we had a few days for new listings to accrue, and sure enough we have a healthy list of 9 addresses, 3 of which are townhomes.

In the spirit of sharing (and helping me keep them straight), I'll share a little photo session of the properties we're going to look at. It'll be like House Hunters, only without the stupid comments!

1. Funny story about this house: it's down the road from the condo community where Evan and I first lived after we got married (when I started blogging, it was from there [for 2 months]). I'd always thought it was very cute from the outside and had a nice, big lot--so imagine my pleasure when I saw it on the listings! This is the first place that we're going to see tomorrow. We have a history with the 1st houses--so far we've put offers on every first house that we've seen (and again on the 20th and 5th billion, but that's another story):

2. This is one of three townhomes, all in the same community right by a marina. Our very close friends (and Evan's boss) actually live in this same community, so that would be pretty fun. Even though we're looking at townhomes, we're definitely saving those as a last resort, so to speak. I'm just gonna lump all three of those photos together:

3. I'm a little dubious about this house only because the other split foyers we've seen have left more than a little to be desired. However, this one is claiming to be move-in ready, so we'll see... :

4. This next house is in the same neighborhood as a previous home we tried to look at, but found out was already under contract. It's a wee bit small, but still pretty cute and in a good location:

5. Funny aside: evidently this next listing shares the same MLS number as a $2 million house in New York. This house is older, but has a very large kitchen and giant fireplace. From the pictures, it looks like it'll need some cosmetic work, including new flooring, but it's a good size and has a nice lot:

6. This house is also from the 70's, but I'm actually second most excited to look at it, and I'll show you why. It will need cosmetic updating, but has a big kitchen and a really nice back yard:

I love this living room!

7. This last house is at the top of the price ranges we're considering right now, but it's been recently renovated and is in our prime location:

So, wish us luck today, and I promise no more jumping the gun on sharing about house news. This is a business where you get your heart broken quite easily...

What's your favorite, judging from the photos?

Home Sweet Home

2011-03-21T07:00:00.000-04:00

I'm back from vacation! It was...interesting...

I'll write a long post about it later (oh, I can feel the excitement), but for now--I'm home. What did I miss?

On Vacation

2011-03-15T07:53:00.000-04:00

I will be on vacation until this time next week! Spotlights to visit include Baltimore, Annapolis, and Philadelphia. So if you know anyone in the area, please tell them to be polite to the two gawking strangers who look like fish outta water.

Until we meet again...write hard, play hard, Tweet hard, Google hard.

Work-in-Progress Wednesday or Whatnot

2011-03-09T07:45:00.002-05:00

As I stated last week, I'm serious about that accountability thing. Nothing like public shaming to motivate you to get it in gear.

I am ashamed to report that last week's word counts were abysmal. From last Wednesday until yesterday, I added a measly 2,452 words to FOUR. Which, if you recall, is only a little more than my daily word count goal.

Oh, the humiliation!

However, over the weekend several more life-things cropped up (which I will talk about next week, hopefully) that are going to be very time-demanding soon (no, I'm not pregnant), so it re-energized me to finish this draft before all the hoopla begins.

Monday I wrote 3,285 words and finally crossed the bridge to the climax of Act Two! I'm very excited for all the events that will soon be playing out, so I've been writing much more reliably than last week.

Hubby and I are going to Maryland next week during my spring break to visit his brother. I'll be taking the netbook, but I doubt much writing will get done. Therefore, my goal is that by next Monday, March 14, my WIP word count will be at 72,000 words.

If not, I will be one sad walrus.

How's your writing coming? Feeling the end-of-winter drags, or is spring being right around the corner putting some jazz in your fingers??

Why I Took Off My Pants.

2011-03-07T08:00:00.002-05:00

Ever since I scribbled my first novel's pages (protag name: Raine) in the first (of many) green spiral-bound notebooks, I've been a pantser--you know, the kind of writer who plots as she goes, throwing caution to the wind and following the white rabbit through its warren and inevitably the warrens of all its millions of relatives.

Though I started this writing thing in 1995, when I was a tender age 9, it wasn't until 2010, at the slightly-tougher age of 24, that I wrote THE END, BITCHES on a novel. I have hundreds--very possibly even thousands--of discarded stories, from a paragraph on a napkin to a hundred hand-written pages, and from the mid-aughts on, dozens of echoey Word files.

Every time I started one of these ideas, I was filled with absolute certainty that this would finally be THE ONE THAT I WOULD FINISH. And then 5, 10, 30 pages later, I moved on to greener pages.

Not until I finished my second novel last year and started making noises about revisions did I come to realize something very important about myself. Despite all previous espousing and belief, I am not a pantser. And I have the dusty skeletons of a lifetime of discarded stories to prove it.

It took NaNoWriMo for me to realize that I needed at least a semblance of an outline in order to flourish. In 2008, I gave up on NaNo at 32k, which was the longest thing I'd written to date. In 2009, unemployed and determined to make it work, I spent the month of October world-building, drawing maps, and figuring out who exactly these people were whose story I wanted to tell. I knew their over-arching plot and a few points in-between. As I wrote, I got more ideas about how I wanted things to progress, and I made notes in my ever-growing sketchbook.

Three months after NaNo, I finished that book, my first. A few months later, after throwing out all but about 18k of the first NaNo idea, I wrote another rough synopsis and finished Saving Me.

This is what I've come to learn:

If I don't have even a basic skeleton idea of the plot (especially the ending), I will never finish.

As I've picked up a discarded draft from last year (Four) and read through the notes I made myself during the initial planning process, I've realized that not only have I saved myself a ton of stress and effort in trying to figure out what a-year-ago-me wanted this story to be about, but I could simply jump back into the writing without doing all the research and soul-searching that killed my spirit before.

So now, with a bullet-listed synopsis of the story, including the major climax and several important plot-points, as well as separate lists for desired character arcs, I'm flying through this novel (for me). Before I write each chapter, I open a new Word document and write a very rough synopsis of what will happen in that chapter. Then, during the chapter drafting, I refer to the synopsis when I need to, but ultimately speed through with no speed bumps AND continuity.

Continuity. Amazing, that.

I'm not stressing about writer's block, because my path has been paved. I'm not trying to think out the best possible twists and turns, because I've already done and recorded it. Even better, I'm writing a draft that will be infinitely easier to revise and edit than the hot messes that my pantsing ways left me with before.

All of these reasons are why I took off my pants.

Do you still write in pants, or have you joined the skivvy crew? Have you found that as your dedication and seriousness about writing grows, you've changed your perceptions of your writing habits?

That Accountability Thing.

2011-03-02T08:52:00.000-05:00

Since getting my golden ticket (okay...white paper) to nursing school, my life--while amorphous and unsure in some areas--is solidifying into a distinct path. School starts in August. This is March. That means I have roughly FIVE MONTHS in which to complete any or all or some of the mega writing goals I outlined for myself this year.

Okay, to be honest, when I made those write goals I was feeling pretty pessimistic about getting into school, so the list is enormo and definitely not feasible. Thanks to some input from a couple of my lovely CPs, I've narrowed my focus. And thanks to Ali Cross and her Ninja Writers, I think I might actually be able to accomplish it.

So, in the name of accountability and public humiliation and all that (plus a sad lack of blog inspiration, which I think many are experiencing throughout the blogoverse), I'm going to revamp my old Writer Wednesday or Whatnot feature. (I just made up that name, so don't go looking for it in the archives.) (Not that I really think anyone would. Just sayin'.)

Here's the skinny:

WIP: FOUR
Genre: urban fantasy
Current length: 53, 894
Estimated length: 80,000
Daily write goal: 2,000 words
Weekly wordcount goal: 10k

Let Me Sum Up:
This is a pretty major write goal for me. I've stuck to it pretty well so far, though the whole dissertation-editing thing derailed me for several days. Between February 10 and February 22, I added around 20k to the WIP. I am not a fast writer by any means. NaNoWriMo is definitely a once-a-year type thing, for the calendar and for my sanity. But desperate times and all that, right? Since I'm essentially giving myself two days off a week, as far as word goals go, I'm hoping to make up for slack on days that I just can't get it all together. Like yesterday, first day back on schedule, I only pumped out 1200 words. C'est la vie, I suppose.

If you're working towards finishing a novel or pulling some Chuck Norris moves on a revision, why not visit The Dojo and consider taking part? We all need support. And what better way to get support than by finding it while you're procrastinating on Twitter and then being suddenly shamed into going back to the WIP? (Not that any of the Ninjas do the shaming--they do the supporting, which leads to the self-shaming. For me, anyway.)

Did you read?

2011-02-28T09:17:00.000-05:00

A quick personal note: I got into nursing school! It finally feels like our life, which has been stuck in neutral since I graduated college and we got married, is getting back on track. So now we're talking about other major changes that might come our way, including *groan* moving...

***

Does anybody watch Portlandia? Unfortunately, I don't get IFC, but I've watched all the clips I can get my hot little hands on. I've never been to Portland, but I know the stereotypes well, and I grew up in my own little free-spirit town with plenty of people like they poke fun at on the show.

I'm always amazed by comedy writers. I can be funny in the moment, but planned humor? Not my thing. I especially love humor that pokes fun at things (which would explain why I almost choked to death laughing when I read this book. It's my opinion that most people in general take themselves too seriously, so it's always a joy to see that mocked (in good humor).

Writers are no different--maybe even worse than some others. There's such pressure to be on top of the publishing game, reading all the new releases, reading all the classics, reading all the craft books, reading the agent blogs, the publishing blogs, the Writer's Digest, The New Yorker and on and on and on...

So take a deep breath for just a moment and watch this. Then feel better.

~Out of Action~

2011-02-23T08:42:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note to let you all know that I will be away from the blogosphere for a few days. I've agreed to edit my brother-in-law's girlfriend's 300-page dissertation by Sunday, and as she is a non-native English speaker, I'm going to have to be very eagle-eyed.

Wish me luck! Hope you all have a lovely week/end!

Marrying My Brother (and other things I don't want to come true)

2011-02-21T07:45:00.001-05:00

First of all, I'd like to welcome all my new followers! Thanks so much for clicking that button. I don't blog as frequently as I did once upon a time, but hopefully when I do, it'll still serve to humor.

Weird Dreams.

We all get them, right? And if you're anything like me, sometimes your dreams are so incredibly vivid that you're convinced they're real and experience true relief when you wake up.

A few weeks before I got married, I had a series of dreams in which I somehow married my brother instead of Evan. I'm not sure I'd ever experienced that kind of relief upon waking, and to cure my incest heebie-jeebies, I away'ed to a dream interpretation site. (In case you're wondering, those sorts of dreams are actually fairly common before life-altering events.)

But what about dreams that we'd really like to come true?

I'm not talking about winning the lottery or going on a Tahitian vacation with this guy:

I'm talking about the off-the-wall, goofy but potentially awesome dreams.

What's mine?

The grocery store.

Yes, you read that right: the grocery store. Something about this:

is linked deep to my creative unconscious. If I had a dollar for every weird, awesome, or some combination of the two dream that takes place in a grocery store, I'd already be in Tahiti with that guy ^^ (and Evan).

The dreams usually start the same way: me innocently buying groceries--usually in the beginning aisles of the store, like the bread or sometimes, in the really cool dreams, some kind of exotic-foods aisle that sadly doesn't exist here in Bumblef*ck, GA. Generally within a few minutes, I go from picking out a lovely bunch of bananas to battling pirates (real dream), finding out I'm a wizard and that the grocery store is a portal (real dream), or searching for various bombs scattered throughout the store whilst fighting off hordes of zombies and/or terrorists who also want to take my dozen eggs very badly (real dream).

Honestly, I have no idea why I dream about the grocery store so much. I'm sure Freud would have a field day with it (and the marrying-my-brother dream, for that matter).

Since I've been dreaming about grocery stores since I was a little kid, I've always, always wanted a chance to include an EPIC grocery store battle in some of my writing. Or, if not the grocery store, maybe a home improvement store, like Lowes. I mean, those aisles of shovels and pickaxes are just dying for some action, aren't they?

I'm finally writing a grocery store action sequence in the WIP. Sadly, it won't be as egg-slinging, jar-breaking awesome as my dreams would like it to be, but it'll do. It'll do.

So tell me I'm not the only crazy person who dreams about grocery stores. Am I? And if the market ain't your thang, what is? Garden Ridge? Hobby Lobby? Inquiring minds want to know!

Bernard Pivot Blogfest

2011-02-16T07:00:00.006-05:00

The lovely Nicole Ducleroir is hosting this blogfest in celebration of surpassing 500 followers and in the spirit of getting to know one another just that much more.

Anyone who's watched Inside the Actor's Studio will be familiar with the questionnaire. The show's host, James Lipton, asks it of every celebrity guest at the close of the interview. The questionnaire was originally created by Bernard Pivot, a French journalist, for the cultural series he hosted on French television from 1991-2001, called Bouillon de Culture.

What is your favorite word? Delicious (my husband and I have a joke about it that originated with Dr. Demento. We always say it "deeeliiiishoussss")

What is your least favorite word? Oh, I could make quite a list, trust me. But here are the top three forever and ever always amen: moist, sofa, squirt

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? A mountaintop forest in late spring or mid-autumn. Especially if a river is involved.

What turns you off? Children (sorry)

What is your favorite curse word? Jesus Christ. Sometimes it's a swear, sometimes a supplication--and sometimes both.

What sound or noise do you love? Rain on a tin roof, a river rushing, the cooing of mourning doves, woodpeckers

What sound or noise do you hate? Nails on a chalkboard, my cats' claws on the wall, Styrofoam squeaking together, my husband flicking the seam on his jeans

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Surgeon, pilot, deep-sea diver, CIA agent, food reviewer, chef, video game tester

What profession would you not like to do? Teacher, police officer, firefighter, mailman, prison warden, podiatrist, dermatologist

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Evan (my husband) is right over there waiting for you. And kudos on living to be 150.

This Day in History! (Just kidding)

2011-02-14T09:33:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day!

Six years ago, Evan and I had our first "date." We were in the final days before this mammoth theatre production we'd been working on for months opened. I was scenic painter, he head carpenter. We spent the night until about 2am in the theatre, doing last-minute painting and tweaking here and there, then stumbled back to his place, where he gave me Benny and Joon and made me fettuccine alfredo (which was the only "fancy" meal he could cook at the time.

Pretty romantic, huh? :)

Six years ago

Awkwardness abounds, but it's a good representation of us. Still is, really...

A few weeks ago.

Thank goodness some things get better with age.

Squeeze a puppy, kiss your lover, take yourself out to dinner and a movie--or do all three!

I Haz the Brilliance.

2011-02-11T07:02:00.003-05:00

Do you know what this place is?

Mack, surveying the comfy cat bed before ultimately deciding to sleep on the important papers instead.

Also, the sad birds on the side of the desk. And no, my copper birdfeeder isn't really that orange (anymore).

If you guessed my crappily-drawn office--DING DING! You're a winner.

I learned some important things in this crappily-drawn office this week.

A) Despite the blizzard in January, the state of Georgia still panics over 1 inch of snow. That melts when the sun comes out.

B) No matter how many soft, fluffy beds I buy my cats, they will always choose to sleep on whatever important pieces of paper are on my desk.

C) The love of something you've written is a feeling like none other.

D) Positive feedback from precious CP's is better than chocolate (and that other thing.)

E) When you think you might abandon a writing project, even if you think it will only be for a short time, MAKE COPIOUS NOTES TO YOURSELF. Write down every SCRAP of information that you're thinking about it. Because when you finally come back to that project, 13 months later, you will JUMP UP AND DOWN when you realize that the only work you have left is putting the words on the paper.

F) When you're trying to find the proper universal remote code for your TV, make sure you're looking at the SHARP list, not the SONY.

What did YOU learn this week?

Something Wicked This Way Comes

2011-02-09T10:17:00.000-05:00

(I love Ray Bradbury. He's my literary great-grandfather.)

I'm something wicked. Here's why:

As you know, I'm taking this fiction writing workshop at the university. So far, I've really enjoyed it and have been impressed by the group's caliber. Thus far, we have workshopped 7 stories/chapter, with today's class bringing the eighth.

Sometimes it can be tough to think of something encouraging and helpful to write in essay format, when all I really want to do is hand them my marked-up copy of their draft and skip off into the sunset, waiting for the cannon fire to make me sh*t my pants*. Six times now, I've managed to write semi-coherent, semi-helpful (I hope) comment sheets.

But today's eludes me.

This is where I'm going to admit that sometimes being in a live-bodied critique format can be tricky. No one wants to step on each others' toes, but as time goes on, we get more comfortable with one another and the footstompers come out.

There's a particular guy in my class who has an...um, unique...way of contributing to the critique. I know he means well, but lately it's started to grate on my nerves. While what he's saying isn't necessarily unhelpful, it's also almost the limit of his input.

Good critique, like good writing, needs to be varied. And adjustable, once you start hearing from other people.

Anyway, this guy's been spouting off for 5 weeks now, and today is his turn on the chopping block.

Let me tell you, I am feeling mightily tempted to use his own critique format against him. I didn't particularly enjoy his contribution, and after he shredded a short story that I really liked (not mine) during last class, I'm feeling a bit vindictive.

Bad Summer! Right? Right.
Right?

Also, I'm trying to put together a thoughtful dual posting on what makes strong female leads and male leads in fiction. So that's why I've been kinda quiet.

*The university I'm attending is a heavily military school. Their cadet corps is, like, 89% of the student body (not really, but it seems like it). So, every day at 5pm, they lower the flag, play the bugle, and...FIRE A FREAKIN' CANNON.

And the first day I was innocently walking by the green when this happened? Unaware, unassuming, unprepared?

Yeah.

Analyze Yourself

2011-02-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

By the time I graduated with a degree in English, analyzing literature had become second nature to me. I could rattle off a 3-5 page paper about anything in an hour. Reading analytically is a learned skill, much like doing geometry proofs or drawing blood from a squirming cat.

So when I sat down to my first day of this Fiction Writing Workshop that I'm taking, you might imagine my pleasure when I saw Edward P. Jones and Tobias Wolff on the syllabus. Brilliant authors, I think. Plenty to write about.

Until the professor started explaining why exactly these literary giants were on our reading list. You see, he doesn't want us to analyze for meaning--he wants us to analyze how these two authors use writing techniques to craft such amazing fiction. How do they bring about character? Setting? What can we learn about story structure, the usage of backflashes, etc?

When I sat down to write my first "book story analysis" on Jones's short "Young Lions," I felt like beating my head against the keyboard. How could I look at this great fiction on a nuts-and-bolts level? It went against everything I'd been trained to do.

I struggled through the assignment and got an okay grade on it, but it wasn't until the next story, Tobias Wolff's "Smorgasbord," that I finally started to understand how to go about the assignment. It wasn't that I didn't understand--it was that I was already doing it, but masking it in my thoughts as pure content analysis.

So I wrote myself a note: first sentence, first paragraph, setting/place, description, ending. These are some of the topics that we tend to emphasize during workshop, so I figured I might as well use them to structure my analysis. I won't say that it exactly flowed out of me, but it was scads easier than the first, and it helped me realize a few things.

All fiction contains metaphor, symbolism, analogy. But especially symbolism.
Use your setting not only to give the reader a center, but also to strengthen characterization.
The details that you choose to describe speak volumes about your characters (the narrators, anyway)

As I've matured as a writer, I've become more conscious of these elements, but the symbolism one still escapes me sometimes, or at least at the levels I'd like it to be resounding.

So here's a thought: read your manuscript like an English major. Make notes as if you were going to write a paper about it.

How many topics can you find?
How often do certain elements reappear? Symbols/metaphors/images, etc.
Do the characters have any sort of connection to something bigger, like a theme?

You might be writing a pop-culture driven YA urban fantasy, but I think this exercise will benefit no matter what your genre. It's all about resonance, threading, and adding as many levels to your writing as possible. Trust me, while your average reader might not be looking for meaning, there will be those readers out there who can't help but search it out, and when they find it in (insert your genre/book here), it's going to stick with them.

ALL YOUR PAGE ARE BELONG TO ME

2011-01-31T10:55:00.000-05:00

(I promise, one day soon this blog won't just be about my cats.)
(Maybe.)

Test Post

2011-01-29T17:17:00.004-05:00

Trying out a new template, but having some issues with pictures. Just playing around...

Support Team (lots of pictures)

2011-01-26T07:02:00.012-05:00

If you didn't believe me before, I think the Significant Others blogfest really proved what a great, supportive man I married. He likes to tell people that I'm a writer, and he has never once begrudged me for spending time with my keyboard and fantasy men rather than with him.

= WIN

But I share my home with two others.

These two aren't quite as supportive, especially when it comes to my writing. In fact, if they just had some opposable thumbs, I'm pretty sure I'd come into my office one morning and discover the strewn-about bits of my computer all over the floor.

Say on the rare occasion I actually feel like being a good writer. I pull out my notebook and pen (Pentel R.S.V.P. extra-fine all the way) and sit at my desk, ready to make some character notes, or maybe plan out a chapter...

Ahhh...sleepy time!

So maybe I not-so-gently remove the offender and settle in for some serious thinking. I'm doing great, really on a roll, and out of nowhere...

This is the best spot in the house.

I try to write around him, and:

Best-tasting pen ever!

In their defense, they don't limit these helpful actions to writing. No, they're pretty equal opportunity.

Trying to install new software:

You don't need to use the wizard with me around.

Painting:

The perspective is off.

Re-organizing bookshelves?

Heehee! Guess what this will look like after we crawl out?

Coming back to the office to work:

Whaddya mean, this is your chair? I don't think so.

Printing homework:

All your page are belong to us.

Trying to put something together?

Woodglue = ambrosia!

Doing laundry:

You should clean out this vent.

Also:

This pile of clean clothes > your lap. Times infinity.

Putting clothes away?

These shirts are so last-season.

Cleaning the bathroom?

There are cobwebs in the corner. Also, this towel is now dirty. I won't say why.

Can't live with them, can't live without them.

Have some great (or not so great) support in your life? :)

Top Ten Songs Blogfest!

2011-01-24T07:00:00.000-05:00

Two blogfest posts in a row, but this one's by me. :)

I'm participating in Alex's Top Ten Songs blogfest--and I think the title is pretty self-explanatory.

I'm an unabashed lover of 90's music, probably due to too many hours watching VH1 and MTV--you know, back when they actually played music.

But I love all types of music, so I'll probably exceed 10 songs. I'll sub by genre, but they aren't in order of importance, okay?

Rock/Pop

1. Third Eye Blind, "How's It Gonna Be?", "Semi-Charmed Life"
2. Counting Crows, "A Long December"
3. Live, "I Alone", "Waitress"
4. Cracker, "Euro-Trash Girl"
5. Hootie and the Blowfish, "Let Her Cry"
6. Cake, "The Distance", "Short Skirt/Long Jacket", "Meanwhile, Rick James"
7. The Cranberries, "Zombie"
8. Alanis Morrisette, "You Oughtta Know", "Uninvited"
9. 30 Seconds to Mars, "Buddha for Mary"
10. Brand New, "Degausser", "Okay I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don't", "Jesus"
11. John Mellencamp, "Pink Houses", "Small Town"
12. Black Eyed Peas, "Pump It", "Imma Be"
13. Colour Revolt, "Blood in Your Mouth"
14. The Rolling Stones, "Honky Tonk Women", "Saint of Me", "Sympathy for the Devil"
15. Pearl Jam, "Black", "Jeremy", "Yellow Ledbetter"
16. Kansas, "Carry On Wayward Son"

"Alternative"

1. Imogen Heap, "Hide and Seek", "The Moment I Said It", "2-1"
2. Jamie Cullum, "7 Days to Change Your Life"
3. Damien Rice, "The Blower's Daughter", "9 Crimes"
4. Jeff Buckley, "Hallelujah"
5. A Fine Frenzy, "Ashes and Wine", "Almost Lover", "The Beacon"
6. The Swell Season, "Falling Slowly"
7. Zero 7, "In the Waiting Line"
8. Gary Jules, "Mad World"
9. Anything by Dead Can Dance/Lisa Gerrard

Scores/Soundtracks

1. Lord of the Rings Trilogy
2. The Dark Knight
3. The Last Samurai
4. Pan's Labyrinth
5. There Will Be Blood
6. Schindler's List
7. Sherlock Holmes
8. Gladiator
9. Jurassic Park
10. The Red Violin
11. Braveheart
12. Road to Perdition
13. Spirited Away
14. The Hours
Basically anything scored by Hans Zimmer or Howard Shore.

Obviously I've left off a ton of music that I love, love. But I'm already bending the rules, so I'll leave it here before I just import my entire iTunes library...

Significant Other Blogfest WITH ANSWERS. For realsies.

2011-01-21T14:01:00.001-05:00

Sorry about the delay, guys. I take full blame for just plain forgetting about it...

Anyway, in-between lunch with his co-workers and driving and watching an old lady hit a truck in a parking lot, I got him to answer! Here we go:

What is it like to be married to a writer?
   Pretty much like being married to anyone else who likes doing something. Summer's pretty normal as far as stereotypical "writers" go. She takes showers, wears makeup, doesn't go out in public with paper crinkles in her hair--you know. Writing is her hobby. I don't care if she never gets published, as long as it makes her smile, it makes me happy.

What would you change about my writing habits?
   Summer always wants to talk about her writing right before bed. Or she gets new ideas as we're laying down to sleep, and invariably turns on the lamp and grabs a notebook. Most of the time she wants to talk to me about it too, even if it's past midnight.
   The other thing is that I never know what project she's working on at any given time. Or she'll go long stretches without talking to me about her novels, so when she asks me for help, I'm about eight revised ideas behind, so sometimes it's hard.

What food/drink is always guaranteed to snap me back from a bad writing day?
   There's something that does that? :-)
   Summer loves Taco Bell and Candy Cane Lane tea. She could probably live off of those.

Final Thoughts/Comments?
   Sometimes I think Summer, or any unpublished writer, puts too much pressure on herself to "have proof" that what she's doing matters. I think that as long as it makes you happy, then you shouldn't have anything to prove to anyone, especially yourself.

Isn't he wonderful? He's the most supportive guy I know, in everything we do.

Significant Other Blogfest

2011-01-21T09:10:00.002-05:00

**Coming Soon**

Yes, I'm sorry, I forgot to ask husband his questions. BUT, I promise to plague him at the lunch-break. So check back in a couple hours!

Real Life Experience

2011-01-19T09:56:00.001-05:00

A week and a half ago, the day before Snowmageddon 2011 shut down north Georgia, Evan and I decided to break out of our usual routine.

And by "decided," I mean I begged and pleaded and cajoled until I brought him around to my point-of-view.

The day was cold, but still sunny, and knowing that most likely we'd be trapped inside for a few days, I thought it would be nice for us to get out in nature, even if just for a little while.

So we decided to drive up the road to visit Tallulah Gorge, which is some sort of natural canyon in the Appalachians. The GA State Parks website says that it's 2 miles long and nearly 1,000 feet deep.

This place is about 20 minutes from our house, so we bundled up, grabbed a camera, and hit the road.

I had faulty directions, so the first place we stopped was actually not the park or a good view of the gorge, but it was still pretty. We did the picture thing, then got back in the car.

The dam.

We figured out that the actual gorge was just a little further down the road. There was a tottering souvenir shop nailed into the side of the cliff, plastered in signs boasting of their "best view of the gorge," so we stopped.

The wind was howling, and tiny snowflakes swirled all around, despite the bright sun. It was beautiful:

Feeling happy-go-lucky, we decided to go into the store and browse around. Lots of fun, cute stuff. We bought some hot cider, then went out on the porch to see the sights with a little protection from the wind.

This was actually at the first spot, but demonstrates out happy-go-luckiness.

The entrance to the state park was just a few hundred yards away from the shop, but Evan wanted to go home. Neither of us had dressed warm enough, so I agreed. We got back in the car and drove a little ways more, eventually crossing into the uppermost county in the state, then pulled a u-turn and were on the way home.

Now, ever since we'd gone to the first viewpoint, we'd noticed a white Toyota following us. We didn't think anything of it, even when I noticed it again at the store, and again when we made the u-turn.

The Toyota followed us all the way back to the town where we live. We were a little uncomfortable, but still figured it was coincidence. As we approached the first turn-off for our neighborhood, Evan decided not to put on his turn signal, so he made the turn suddenly.

Toyota followed, and parked at the bottom of the hill.

Now, I was more creeped out than Evan at this point, so I asked him to go straight over the hill and drive the loop around the neighborhood, rather than pulling directly onto our street, where the car driver could see us. He did, we parked at the house, and went inside.

We needed to go back out to the grocery store, but for whatever reason we puttered around inside for about 25 minutes before going back outside. Just as we approached the car, we happened to look up at the road--to see the white Toyota driving by.

Coincidence?

We got into the car and started back onto the road. Just down the hill from our house is the tiny "town center," which consists of a post office, bank, and police station/city hall, all in the space of about 500 square feet.

As we approached the post office, we saw the Toyota sitting on the edge of its parking lot, facing the road. Not parked, but waiting.

As we drove by, toward the traffic light, the Toyota pulled out and followed us.

We turned left. He turned left.

He followed us all the way to the grocery store.

Now, keep in mind that we were in the house for almost half an hour--and this guy was circling our neighborhood, looking for us (we guess).

Evan still thought it was coincidence, but I've had nearly 25 years of worried mother in my head, advising me not to trust anyone, so I was already determined that something was Wrong.

When we got to the grocery store, Evan turned toward the gas station instead of the parking lot, and the car followed. We did several strange maneuvers, all of which the car followed. At this point, it was pretty damn obvious, even to Evan, that we were being followed, still.

So instead of parking, we went back to the road and turned down the road for the next little town. I wanted to go to the police station, which I'd always been told to do in these circumstances, but we didn't know where it was exactly.

As we approached the town square, Evan pulled off into another parking lot near a bunch of restaurants and parked. As the car turned in after us, I grabbed Evan's arm and asked (told) him to back out and keep driving. As luck would have it, the police station was behind these restaurants, and we drove straight into the parking lot.

Now, I didn't see what happened, but Evan said that when we pulled into the parking lot, the white Toyota went straight down the little road instead of parking. So when we parked at the police station, we didn't see the car.

I ran inside, only to find the place was locked. Locked! On a Saturday! There was a little foyer, so we stood there while Evan called one of his co-workers, who gave us directions to the sheriff's department.

To sum up this long story, we went to the sheriff's dept, filed a report, and a deputy followed us back home. We didn't see the white Toyota again.

Why was he following us?

Why was he circling our neighborhood?

What if I hadn't gotten Evan to drive the long way to our house?

Did he see where we lived, for sure?

Evan and I didn't even have so much as a baseball bat at the time. But we live in the basement apartment of a house, and we're surrounded by 5 other families, all within 30 feet. Not an ideal place to try and rob, if that's what the guy was after.

I know appearances can be deceiving, but it was a nice car--nicer than ours, for sure. Probably a 2008 Corolla SS, GPS on the window. Guy was dressed for cold weather, but had on sunglasses. I saw a wedding ring glint in the sun at one point.

Who was he? We still don't know.

Going to sleep that night was terrifying, and the next day we bought some motion-sensor security lights. Then the snow came and trapped everyone for a week.

All I can hope is that the guy was trying to pull a very not-funny prank on a young couple.

Has anyone else had this experience? What did you do?

Blame it on Microsoft.

2011-01-14T09:12:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in my last blog post, we got the snowstorm of the year (not saying much, so far) Sunday night. I think the grand total was around 10 inches where I live, which is pretty good. Definitely the most snow I've seen in a long, long time.

Since the state of Georgia has, like, 3 snowplows and 2 bags of salt, we were locked in for a few days. Husband was out of work until today (but he wasn't complaining).

And what was I doing during all this?

Umm...definitely not blogging. Because of this:

Mass Effect

Yup, I spent 2 days playing (and beating) Mass Effect on the Xbox 360. I really love games like this--it's like an interactive book, which is the best possible future for books, let's be serious.

Also, I really want to be on the writing team for these kinds of video games. Really really.

Anyway, I may or may not have immediately put in Mass Effect 2, so I may or may not be doing that over the weekend instead of socializing. Ahem.

So...yeah.

(PS: I played a girl character, not that fugly dude.)

Snowmageddon

2011-01-10T09:22:00.000-05:00

If you've watched the news/weather at all, you probably have heard that a big winter storm was getting ready to pummel the South.

Well, it did.

As I'm writing this post, there's probably eight or so inches on the ground, and it's coming down steadily. Tonight they're forecasting freezing rain to top it off, so needless to say, I don't think any of us are going to be moving any time soon.

For my northern readers, this is no big deal. But I haven't seen more than one or two inches since 1993, when the Storm of the Century gave us 3 feet and completely shut down the state. I was seven, but I remember we didn't have any power, and we had to cook dinner over a fondue pot burner.

But today we've got power, video games, food in the fridge, and no class or work for Evan. The view outside is simply beautiful, and the kittens are hilarious as they rush from window to window, meowing and chirping, and generally trying to figure out WTF happened outside.

Happy Snow Day!

Or Monday, for you unlucky ones.

A Writer's Thought for the New Year

2011-01-07T07:02:00.000-05:00

[I will be splicing this together, so where you see an ellipses, it's where there is original text missing.]

From Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke

February 17, 1903

You ask whether your verses are good...You compare them with other[s], and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts...I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way.

Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart; acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.

Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose...Avoid at first those forms that are too facile and commonplace: they are the most difficult, for it takes a great, fully matured power to give something of your own where good and even excellent traditions come to mind in quantity.

Therefore save yourself from these general themes and seek those which your own everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty--describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory...

Try to raise the submerged sensations of that ample past; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away.

And if out of this turning inward, out of this absorption into your own world verses come, then it will not occur to you to ask anyone whether they are good...For you will see in them your fond natural possession, a fragment and a voice of your life...

I know no advice but this: to go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise...

Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside...

...Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer...

2011 Reading Goals

2011-01-05T07:30:00.002-05:00

Since I'm going back to school this year and my income was cut by 33% after getting laid off last year, I've had to tailor my reading goals to focus on books that I either already own or can get from the library.

Even though I read close a hundred books in 2010, I didn't scratch the surface of the lofty list I made for myself , so with that in mind, I'm giving myself a nice mixture to start out with.

If I read these 30 books, then I will have read every book I own, and I think that's something worth saying. So without further ado, here's my beginning reading list for the year:

The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson
The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor
The Plague, by Albert Camus
Gods in Alabama, by Joshilyn Jackson
Magic in the Blood, by Devon Monk
Magic in the Shadow, by Devon Monk
Magic on the Storm, by Devon Monk
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Horse Whisperer, by Nicholas Evans
The Unvanquished, by William Faulkner
The Gatekeeper, by Michelle Gagnon
I, Claudius, by Robert Graves
The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean Auel
Hood, by Stephen Lawhead
The Black Prism, by Brent Weeks
Dune, by Frank Herbert
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
Outlander, by Diana Galbadon
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Kushiel's Dart, by Jacqueline Carey
Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett
A Place to Come To, by Robert Penn Warren
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
The Skystone, by Jack Whyte
Shadowfever, by Karen Marie Moning

I'm not going in any particular order, but hopefully putting it here will keep me honest. :)

Any recommendations for me to add to my list?

Show Me Yours Blogfest

2011-01-03T07:00:00.000-05:00

Today's the triad-hosted blogfest, in which we share a cleaned-up passage (500 words or less) from our 2010 NaNoWriMo novels.

For the complete list of participants, you can check here or here.

I had a lot of passages I liked from Dry Run, but I decided to share the end of the novel. Yes, that's right: the end.

It's 647 words long, but I think the extra 147 words were necessary for setting the scene.
Thanks for stopping by, and please be sure to check out the other entries!

*******

Donovan burst onto the scene, nausea pounding through his throat, spinning his head. He felt the collision with her time bubble, and the impact sent him over the edge. His weak body convulsed on itself and he fell forward, stomach heaving. Stars danced across his vision even as he struggled to finish, to climb to his feet.
She stood at the focal point, the three men dangling in the air in front of her. Each expression frozen. Anger, hatred. And the fear born of pure love.
Pushing himself across the frozen ground, he grabbed her ankle, fingers nearly unresponsive from the cold.
She jerked, then looked down at him. He felt the automatic battering of her power against him, but he was ready. Deflected it off with a simple shrug. And then the surprise of recognition flared across her face.
“Stop.” His voice sounded weak, and he burst into a coughing fit. She stared at him, expression morphing from shock into anger, and then resolution.
“I can’t.”
Sorrow drenched her words, hitting him in the gut. But still he dragged himself standing. Both their shoulders heaving. Gazes locked through the inky air.
“You can’t change it.”
She snapped her gaze away from him, locking it on the man in the middle of the air. A lock of hair fell forward over his left eye. At her sides, her fingers curled into fists.
“Yes I can.”
He felt her intention shift before she moved. Even as she brought her hand up, resolution blazing in her eyes, he hated himself for what he had to do.
Their hands met in a burst of light, red and gold mixing like fireworks. A supernova star. She pushed against him, her will nearly overpowering.
Around them, the bubble of time warped.
Hardening his heart into the solid core of ice he’d come to embrance, he whipped his left hand forward. It struck her directly on the temple, the perfect amount of pressure to knock her brain into her skull.
Their eyes met, and in the last flash before she collapsed to the ground, he felt every nuance of her hurt and sorrow rend his soul.
And then she hit the ground with a solid thud.
Time snapped back into instant play, and Donovan let himself fall to the ground beside her, eyes trained on the scene in front of them.
The primal’s strike flashed forward.
Adam Savage’s lips formed his wife’s name even as the silver blade burrowed into his throat. A crimson arc sprayed into the air, and then he was falling, falling.
Donovan bent forward over Claire, covering her body with his. Hiding her unseeing eyes from the vision before them.
Adam hit the ground, hand splaying open toward his wife. Dark eyes locked on Donovan.

And then the air around them twisted into a vortex, and Donovan dug his fingers into Claire’s clothing, holding her against him with all his strength as the purchase he’d made slammed its bargain home.
Darkness swept around them, tucking them into its frigid womb. Like the center of a tornado, everything screamed and whirled until he thought he might separate from his soul.

And then it all went still.
Donovan Stryker opened his eyes, feeling the sticky resistance of blood seeping from his tear ducts.
Beneath him, Claire Savage lay still, like a doll. Chest rising and falling. His head spun with a whirlwind of emotions, fear and anger and rage and terror and love all mixing and pummeling him until he almost wished that he’d stayed behind.
Maybe he could leave before she woke. How many times would he be the cause of her heart breaking? How many times could one man break a woman until she was gone forever?
He pushed himself to his hands and knees, chest constricted. Breath ragged. Stomach twisting, mouth dry and sour.

She opened her eyes.

One Year

2011-01-01T13:33:00.000-05:00

I read this blog's inaugural post yesterday. It was a bit depressed, hopeless--but I made a few goals.

And I'm pleased to say that I met--and exceeded--them.

Last year (2010), I wrote 3 novels and two short stories. A grand total of approximately 250,000 words.

I'm proud of that.

I met all of you amazing, wonderful people. I've been fortunate enough to meet a couple of you in real life (DL and Nicole), and I've found a critique group that I look forward to being part of for years to come.

Honestly, I'm not sure what I did with my morning before blogging. Anyone remember? Anyone?

2010 wasn't my favorite year, though it had its ups. So all I can do is focus on making 2011 even better than I could hope. I'm wishing for positive energy for you all in this new year, many creative impulses, and much love and laughter.

(Don't forget the Show Me Yours blogfest on Monday, Jan 3rd!)

Photo Recap

2010-12-30T09:52:00.000-05:00

I won't say much...we've been passing along various sicknesses through the family since Christmas Eve eve. My poor husband has had the worst of it; we're finally getting him in to the doctor today (note: getting appointments during flu season is not easy). Then yesterday I started feeling it come on. I'm going to the prime care unit later this afternoon...

Anyway, I did in fact get a new digital camera for Christmas, so I thought I'd share some photos with you. We got a white Christmas here in Georgia--first one in the metro-Atlanta area since 1883.

Oh, and the kittens? Yeah, none of that "punishment" I was hoping for happened. They took over the house immediately, cowing both the adult cats with one spare glance.

First off--this is the painting I did, which I mentioned in my post last week. Everyone was very amused and pleased, which is exactly what I intended. (For the record, I'm the one hugging the cat in the bottom left)

Mack is mourning the loss of the great mountain of presents.

This is Herbie the Munchkin cat. I rescued him from the shelter where I used to work about a year and a half ago. He's the sweetest boy ever, but our kittens were terrified of him.

This is Roo, the other adult cat. This is pretty much her typical expression.

Starting to snow!

Nathan (bro-in-law) and Kozue getting some video of the snow.

Morning after Christmas. We got about an inch and a half?

Being the awesome kitty-mom that I am, I harnessed up Mack for a winter wonderland adventure. He loved it and didn't want to come inside, even when he was shivering from the cold.

And finally I'll leave you with this utterly goofy recording of me narrating the snowfall...

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday time. I heard that only 4 states in the continental US didn't have snow, which is pretty amazing.

Also hoping that this sickness doesn't come your way...

Have a wonderful New Year's Eve, and I'll be seeing you on Saturday, my one-year-blogiversary.

Smiles Here. No, Really.

2010-12-23T09:37:00.000-05:00

Okay, I lied. No smiles here, but I'm trying.

I didn't want to end my year of blogging on a dour note, so instead I'll give you the lead-in into my holiday weekend:

Yesterday I spent all day painting the afore-mentioned pictures (and yes, I did end up including the girlfriend), then spent three hours last night making the Martha Washington candy I included in my Be Jolly, By Golly! blogfest post. Dude, that shit's worse to make then I remember. But tasty. However, I lick so much off my hands while I bake that I feel sick when it's done.

I've been estranged from my family for six months, but we made up this past Monday, so this afternoon hubby and I are going over to have Christmas with them and eat dinner. I'm nervous and anxious and trying to be positive about it, but it ain't happenin'. I also made brownies to take over there. And since I wasn't counting on things being reconciled, I did frantic shopping, so the gifts are on the lame side.

And after we leave my parents, we're swinging by the house to pick up the kittens and heading down to my in-law family. My bro-in-law lives in Maryland, so we only get to see him twice a year; therefore, it's a big deal.

I'm secretly looking forward to keeping the kittens at their house for 5 days. They've been incredibly rotten the last few days, and my in-laws' cats scare the stuffing out of them. So there, kittens. Take that.

When I got out of bed this morning, I kicked the wall and broke my toenail. Then I cut myself shaving in the shower, dropped my contacts on the floor, and saw that the kittens have put the last nail in the Christmas tree's coffin.

I'm hoping all of this is getting the bad stuff out of the way so the holiday festivities are enjoyable.

I never got my mild case of flu, so I'll be reminding myself to smile.

Happy Holidays!

Truthfully?

2010-12-21T09:33:00.000-05:00

I have enough things to admit to make a full-fledged tell-the-truth Tuesday post. Here we go:

1. Even though I restored peace with my family, I am seriously considering moving to Alaska to get away from them.

2. In the past 2.5 weeks, I have crocheted 6 gloves, 2 hats, and a scarf, all because I really just wanted an excuse to watch 3 seasons of The Tudors and start Mad Men.

3. I kinda hope to get a mild case of flu before Christmas, as my cheer-o-meter is somewhere around -5.

4. I'm drawing/painting a goofy little family portrait for my in-law family with us all as "Santa's Elves" (inside joke), but I'm torn on including my bro-in-law's girlfriend. They've been together for three years and we think they're serious, but she's Japanese and he's super sensitive about it, and I'm terrified that my cartoony drawing skills might make me seem racist if I try to draw her. But then I'm afraid if I leave her out, bro-in-law will be deeply offended. *deep breath*

5. I told my husband he was getting an Xbox. *cringe* It's not from me.