W-I-P Wednesday

Geez, here it is again! It's like it comes every week or something...




Saving Me
Word count: 56,020
Goal: in the ballpark of 75,000 
Genre: women's commerical fiction 


General Thoughts


 As you can see, I've added nearly 6k to my wordcount since last week. I'm pretty happy with that progress, but hope to be speeding it up even more. I have a deadline in sight and really want the first draft complete by July 15. What can I say? I love arbitrary goals. 


I'm really battling the inner editor/shitty draft police right now, but so far I'm winning. Let's just say there's going to be a lot of work to do come revision time... 


I'm reading Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Mermaid Chair. She's the author of The Secret Life of Bees and one of the better-known names in Southern women's fiction. I haven't read Bees, but Mermaid Chair isn't bad so far. 


Also, I'm reorganizing my bookshelves to be in alphabetical order. Before I had it ordered by size. Is that weird? I'm a visual artist too, so I liked the symmetry. Alas, one of the shelves on my Target bookcase is sagging quite alarmingly, and the stupid manufacturers decided that it didn't need to be finished on the bottom, so I can't really flip it over. I'm hoping hubby will add a little support to it one of these days...just needs a few more gentle reminders. 




I've acquired 2 new television shows: The Gates and Rookie Blue. Any others watching these? What do you think? 

Morning Diversion

I seem to be going through one of my sinusitis spells, where the entire right side of my body, head to shoulders, shuts down. I've always wondered why my sinus issues seem to affect me this way, but that's how it is and how it continues to be.

In the haze of pain and puffiness, I remembered that the deadline to claim a free proof copy of my '09 NaNoWriMo book is June 30! Way to procrastinate, huh?

Anyway, I set about CreateSpace to get my copy going.
Turned out to take me a lot longer than I'd expected. My main issue was figuring out how to convert my .doc file to a .pdf, but I finally just used an online converter. Thankfully nothing bad happened.

Then I got to design my pretty pretty book cover! It was uber-fun, let me tell you. Seeing your name and your book title in print (sorta), just like it'll look on the book...amazing! I didn't have anything special made, so I just tweaked one of their templates into something that matched my theme.

Everything's out for review with the CreateSpace folks right now, but I should be getting the green flag tomorrow!* Scooting in just under the clock, as always...

But it was great fun. I didn't touch a single modifier in the book, either. It's in all its original glory, all 70k+ words! My eyes will no doubt bleed when I read it, but hey--I didn't want to pass up the opportunity, you know? And if I ever decide to edit it into something decent, having a bound copy will be handy.

So with all this forward momentum, I'm really going to try and finish up my WIP soon, as in the next 2.5 weeks. That means I only have to write about 1300 words a day--not bad at all! And then I can look at that book in all its eye-bleeding glory! Yay!


ADDITIONAL:
  I just read the First Novels Club post this morning, and they're giving away a book that sounds amazing! A Blue So Dark is about a teenage girl dealing with her mother's growing schizophrenia. Some of the themes sound promising to echo my own novel, so I'm really excited to hear about it. Check it out!


*I'll definitely be sharing pictures when I get my proof copy. I loved looking at others' on the NaNo forums! 

We Survived (many photos)

Not that I was worried or anything.

In case you missed it, Evan and I drove up to Nashville, TN last Friday to visit his brother, who is teaching a summer film course with one of his old Vanderbilt buddies. We stayed with the Vandy buddy and his wife in their beautiful 1930's-era home in one of the city's historic districts.

The drive up would have been fine--we drove straight up through the 2 counties between us and the state line, dashed across a smidgen of North Carolina, then drove across south-eastern Tennessee to Chattanooga. We hit Chattanooga right at rush hour Friday evening, which of course we neglected to realize, as we forgot we were changing time zones. D'oh. We sat in Chattanooga rush hour for almost an hour, which put us arriving in Nashville at 8pm, CST.

Trip was short, but fun! It was my first time in Nashville, so Evan and I did a driving tour, including the downtown area and the Parthenon recreation. After that, we all mostly sat around and played video games--specifically, Left 4 Dead II (zombie game).

The best part of the trip (for me) was a visit to McKay's, a used book and movie/video game outlet. I know that buying used books can be frowned upon in the publishing/aspiring-to-publishing world, but sue me--we're poor and not getting rich any time soon. The place was amazing--tons of books (and movies and video games), many of which were fairly new releases. I could have stayed there for hours, but I was pushing everyone's patience at 40 minutes. I did manage to snag 8 books, which I'll picture later (and a DVD all for $17).

Didn't get as much writing done as I'd hoped, but I did get an entire new plot idea that I'm very excited about. Surprisingly, it was another women's Southern fiction. So I'm looking forward to finishing Saving Me and getting it querying so I can start on my SNI!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Let the pictures begin.

Blairsville, GA

This is what highways look like in the mountains. 

Tennessee 

One of the interesting things we saw while stuck in Chattanooga traffic. Any guesses what those ginormous tires are for? 

Broadway Street, Nashville 

More Western stores than you can shake a stick at! 

Why, hello. 

The Parthenon recreation. Pretty neat from a distance...

And then up close you realize they made it out of the same conglomerate they make libraries out of. I mean, really? Couldn't have done something more special for the Parthenon?? 

This is MacGyver, the awesomest dog ever! 

This is where we spent most of our time...

My book bounty! I've read some before, but don't own.

Anecdote, or How I Got My Blog Title

Have you ever wondered where my blog title came from? It's not as open-ended as one might think.
I've had my fair share of failed blogs, the last of which I called "Twentysomething." These were blogs that encompassed my life as a whole. When I made the New Year's resolution that led to this blog, I wanted it to be solidly about my writing (even though I incorporate plenty about my life).

The blog title came from Hemingway. That's one of the best places to get a blog title, I think.

As you probably know, Hemingway (or I could be pretentious and call him 'Papa') moved to Paris in 1921 and shortly thereafter met Gertrude Stein.

The advice actually comes from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which was Stein's self-portrait. In it, she wrote [addressing Hemingway]:

'There is a great deal of description in this,' she said, 'and not particularly good description. Begin over again and concentrate,' she said.


I'm no Hemingway, but I could use some of that concentration, and I'm sure you can too.

So thanks, Gertie. You were a weird one, but I like you nonetheless.

PS: You can argue that the blog title actually comes from Stein, but I'm going to go ahead and say it's Hemingway. He's my Papa, after all...

PPS: If you want a good example of too much bad description, check out my new pages! I just figured out how to do them. :-)

Goal: 6/24

Today I will write at least 2,000 words.
Today I will stop worrying about how long my book may or may not be.
Today I will stop wondering if that's the right metaphor, or if I should use this one instead...
Today I will remember how much I love my story, and how much I love writing it.

Today I will look at this picture to remind myself that I've done it before, and I can do it again:

also today I will eat more brownies. 

W-I-P Wednesday

Has it really already been a week?
Google Desktop doesn't lie (or does it?).


Saving Me
Word count: 50,855
Goal: in the ballpark of 75,000 
Genre: women's commerical fiction 


General Thoughts


I'm reaching that stage where I'm a bit terrified about where I'm going. I know from experience that it's pretty well downhill from 50k--thank goodness. However, the more I write, the more things are deviating from my [extremely loose] outline/plot guide. I'm already seeing the need for tons of scenes to be added earlier in the draft, freaking out about the heavy lean towards romance [though it's not a bad thing], and generally wondering how the hell I can communicate without their #$*@ eyes. 


In short, I'm making progress. 




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Tonight will be Sigo's last night with Evan and me. We're going to Nashville this weekend, so we'll be taking Sigo to her new home a little earlier than expected. 


She had a fairly stressful weekend visiting the in-laws and their cats. 

Lots of toys lying about, though. 

Herbie just wanted to be friends, but he's a big boy & a wee bit intimidating (even though his legs are three inches long and he's declawed...) 

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I"m reading my first Jodi Picoult book, Nineteen Minutes. I'll withhold judgment until I'm finished. 

In the meantime, I'm curious about your genres. 

What genre do you write? 

Sometimes Blogger seems inundated with YA authors--not that there's anything wrong with that. Just wondering where some of the other genres are! 

Recipe

Hope everyone had an enjoyable Father's Day weekend or just plain weekend. Evan, Sigo, and I packed up Saturday afternoon and headed down to stay with Evan's parents. I was hoping Sigo and their Munchkin cat Herbie would hit it off, but they were a bit shy all weekend...

Had my last visit with my wrist surgeon this morning. He's discharging me as a patient after I get a Functional Capacity Evaluation, which will determine my percentage of disability. We talked to an attorney a little bit this afternoon; he said wrist injuries don't really rank up there on the settlement scale. Last time I checked, our wrists are pretty important, huh?

But I digress...

Writing has been slow-going, so please don't mock me too heartily on W-I-P Wednesday. I'm hoping to have surpassed 52k by then, but who knows?

I've gained quite a few new followers recently--hi! Welcome! Hopefully I'll be entertaining enough for you to stick around. I'm in a bit of a slump lately, but I'm trying to pull myself out of it, promise. :-)

~

A while ago, a few of you expressed interest in some recipe-sharing when I'm having particularly dull blog days. I think this counts, and last night I made this the 2nd time and thought I should share...

Black Bean and Couscous Salad

(I made up this recipe, so the proportions may need adjustment.)

For two:

1 c. couscous, prepared as per instructions
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed clean
1-2 stalks of celery, diced
Crumbled feta cheese to taste
(there's room for a lot of variation, but here are some ideas that I've done)
black olives, sliced
1/4 jar marinated artichoke hearts
tomato, diced
chicken breast sliced thin and sauteed in olive oil and garlic

Basically all you do is cook the couscous and prepare all the fixin's...
Then stir it all together.
Garnish with the feta.
Dress with lemon juice/olive oil mixture to taste.
I ate mine on a bed of baby romaine, but you don't have to do that either.

Eat.
Enjoy.
Repeat.