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So I just realized that Tuesday will be the one-year anniversary of this blog.  I still haven't finished a book to the point of self-publishing, but I've written more this year than I have in several years past, so I consider it a win.  (I've written even more, if I include the blog posts I've put up here.) 2014 has been an...interesting year.  Health issues and deaths in the family aside, it hasn't been bad.  I feel like I'm getting a better sense of who I am as a writer, which is a big part of what I need to be confident in my writing.  My day job has had its ups and downs, but the year is ending on a high note, which always makes me feel a little better.  I'm thankful for the life I am privileged to lead, and I hope to use my time to make the lives of others a little better, too. There.  Now that I've gotten the maudlin sentimentality out of the way, it's time to set some goals for myself for next year.  More and more, I'm realizing that i...

The other day, I started sorting through my jewelry.  I had recently gotten a new necklace, and I wanted to put it away and make sure I had everything else in order.  A few years ago, I had done a massive culling of the herd, as it were, and I like to go through and see if there's anything else that should be sent out to pasture when I add new items. I don't have a ton of jewelry (anymore), and I realized that the items I kept, and that I wear the most often, are the ones with stories behind them.  There are the necklaces my husband has given me, a locket with some of the dirt from my father's grave inside, and earrings my mother gave me when I graduated from high school.  Not all of them are things that have big, important meanings, of course - I have several necklaces that I bought at various conventions that I keep because they remind me of the convention and, of course, because they're pretty. You can tell a lot about a person (or a character) by the things t...

Well, that last post certainly got more attention than I expected!  To any new readers, welcome to my little corner of the internet.  I'm a writer who's working on making writing a bigger part of my life, and will someday have a book or short story published, be it by a publisher or by my own hand (thank you, self-publishing). Being a big fan of fantasy and science-fiction works, I read a lot of books in a series, and I've enjoyed seeing how different authors handle the overarching story lines.  My favorites are the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett, the  Dresden Files  by Jim Butcher, and the  October Daye  books by Seanan McGuire.  Conveniently, I'm involved with craft swaps on  Ravelry  for two of the three series, so I've been going through the books again and reminding myself why I love them so. The Discworld books were the first series that hooked me from the start.  They're not a traditional book series, in that you don'...

Alas, I'm not winning Nano this year.  I'm disappointed, but I'm not all that surprised.  I've gotten a good handle on what I want to do with the story, so I'm hoping to continue with it over the next few months.  My goal is to have something ready for self-publication by this time next year (and I'm pretty sure I said something very similar around this time last year, so take that goal with a grain of salt). In other news, yesterday I finally got a couple of tattoos that I've been planning for several months.  They're both song lyrics, one around each wrist, and they were done by the magnificent  Magdalena Sky  at  BJP Southcenter .  I wanted to go over what I got, and why, when it's still fresh in my mind.  Pictures! The right wrist:   The quote around the right wrist is the title of  Seanan McGuire's  beautiful song, " My Story is Not Done ", with a quill across the inside of my wrist.  I first heard her ...

My friends, it's not looking good.  According to the Nanowrimo website, I need to write 5,543 words a day (including today) in order to finish on time.  While I do tend to have good days, I'm not thinking it's likely that I'll have that many days that are THAT good in time.  I think I've got a good handle on what I'm writing now, though, or at least a good idea of what the plot is going to be, so I'm hoping to keep the momentum up. Of course, beginning tomorrow we have The Holidays, and there is much crafting to be done before Christmas.  With luck, that will just be my time on my commute, but it depends on how behind I get on things. In other news, I hope to get back to a regular (though less frequent) blogging schedule here.  I'm pretty close to recovered from surgery, so now it's a matter of getting back up to speed.  All I can think right now is that it's been a very long year, and I'm hoping for things to be a little calmer in 2015. ...

I admit, I seriously contemplated throwing in the towel on Nano for a bit.  I didn't write anything for a couple of days, thinking that maybe it would best if I took a break from writing altogether for a bit.  Besides, it's getting close to the holidays, which means that there's going to be a great deal of crafting to be done to get gifts together for everyone. Then I woke up this morning, and realized that I needed to write.  Even though I know it's unlikely that I'll be able to finish Nano in time (I only need to write about 4400 words a day, no big deal *faints*), I needed  to write.  Not writing anything for a few days had actually bothered me, and I noticed that my depression seemed to pick up.  I'm not entirely certain what kind of link, if any, exists there, but if it helps, I'm all for it. Going back to the story, I decided to change around some of my outline, which was mostly caused by one of my characters showing up having been beaten up like ...

My friends, I have to admit that I'm hitting the wall.  I'm also starting to be overwhelmed with doubt.  I had hoped that this would be the year I would get something to a point that I would be willing to self-publish it, or that I would submit something I had written for publication.  I did manage the second, and was rejected - twice - but at least I managed to accomplish something.  I have serious doubts about the first goal, though, and at this point I'm not sure it's something I should even be trying to do. My writing isn't great.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't even cross the line into "good" territory.  I have ideas, but I don't know how to implement them, and I don't think I'm capable of putting them in such a way that anyone outside of my head would even care about it.  I've gotten pretty accustomed to throwing words into the void, but now I don't know if I should be doing even that much. I have no idea if I'm going ...

Right now, my main character is caught under a table while a meeting is getting ready to take place.  This means that I have a batch of characters to introduce via their voices and shoes alone.  This has actually been a lot of fun, because it gives me a chance to figure out how someone's voice will make an impression on a person who doesn't get to see who they are. Of course, my main character is going to get found, but in the meantime, I'm having fun with it.  She's getting in way over her head right now, and she doesn't even realize it.  Bwahahahaha. In other news, I'm back to work for the first time in a week and a half (the last week, I was working from home, so I'm back in the office now), and I'm already exhausted.  I'm just going to try my best to get through as much of the week as I can, and use the time on my commute to write a little more.  I'm behind, but I think I still have a chance.

Catch-up day!  It seems like every time I do Nanowrimo, I ended up with one or two days where I start to write ALL THE WORDS and try to play catch up.  The two times that I've won Nanowrimo so far, it was done on the last day, within an hour or two of midnight.  Clearly, the words flow better when I'm closing in on a deadline. Of course, that's not completely accurate - sometimes  the words flow better.  Other time, there's a loop of "can't write" repeating in my head while I stare at the blank page, which is less than useful.  Still, it looks like today is doing some damage to the backlog.  I decided to actually try out the timer page ( Moosti , if you're interested) that I had bookmarked in preparation for Nano and then completely forgotten about.  I've never really written with a timer before, but I think it's working pretty well for me.  I do think that 25 minutes is pushing it for me - by about minute 20, I was having trouble focusing ...

It's been slow (shocking, I know), but it's moving again.  I'm having fun learning a little more about one of my side characters, who I hadn't really fleshed out before.  That's the part I enjoy the most about Nanowrimo - having to spill language out means that the characters get the chance to play without much supervision.  Of course, that's when things like my fluffy chick-lit book turning into psychological horror tales happen, so it's a mixed blessing. How are things going for you all?  Anyone else having a slow spell, or are the words just flowing forth for you?  If so, I'd ask that you send me some of your good writerly vibes, but I'm not going to take away from another writer's groove.  Enjoy!

Remember how I said my word count was pathetic yesterday?  Today makes it look like GOLD.  I need to skip over the rest of this section and get into something where things are happening, because right now, it's not what I want to be writing.  I'm doing a lot of emotional set-up between characters, and discovering that my main character is a bit more of a bitch than I had intended (hate it when that happens), but nothing's really going on.  I need to fix that.  Bring on the magic and the espionage!

Hark, I have returned!  My word count is utterly pathetic, but I'm back from the hospital and appear to be on the road to recovery from the surgery.  Note to self:  don't neglect your abs so much, because they do far more for you than you realize. I think I'm going to try going back to writing on the computer, rather than drafting by hand, at least for now.  I can type much faster than I can write, and I'm spending a lot more time in front of a computer for the rest of the week.  I'm working from home (because my office is made of awesome and lets me do things like that for cases like this), which means fighting with the cats for lap-space.  In general, the cats win. I'm hoping the writing will pick up, as I'm getting into the plot and out of the set-up portion of things.  At least, that's what I have planned, and so far, my characters haven't been fighting me too much.  Of course, I've been giving them plenty of time to babble their way thro...

Unfortunately, today saw no new words added to the novel. Between trying to get things at the day job at a place where I can leave for three days and not check email and trying to remember what I need to bring with me, something had to give. On a personal note, my friends, I am terrified. The only time I've ever even been to a hospital was when I sprained my hands when I was a kid. I visited my father when he had his heart attacks, but I've never been in a hospital bed myself. And now I'm going to be cut into and have part of myself removed and... I've the feeling I won't be sleeping well tonight. I'll most likely be offline tomorrow, but will be back soon after. Keep the words flowing in my absence - I know you can.

Well, it's only day three, and I've already missed my word goal for today.  I'm still in the range where I can make it up easily, but it always makes me a little anxious. Writing on the train was a little more difficult than I had anticipated - I'm going to need to figure out the best angle to hold the pen while balancing the notebook on my bag on my lap, otherwise my hand is going to feel like it's falling off. I decided that one of the scenes I'd been getting stuck on wasn't strictly necessary, so I skipped the rest of it.  Of course, then I realized that I'd planned on building off of things that were set up in that scene, so I'm probably going to have to go back and do some clean up.  But for now, that's for December.  (And so the list of things to fix in post begins!)

Well, I've survived day two, and I'm still on target.  I've finished the first two scenes (which are predominately set-up), and started the third scene, which will finish out the intro chapter.  It's been moving pretty well, though today there was more real-life stuff going on that distracted from the writing.  Tomorrow, the commute to and from work should give me some solid time to sit with the notepad and some music and confuse the heck out of my seat-mates on the train.  Something about scribbling in a hardback journal with a fountain pen seems out of the ordinary for some folks.  Can't imagine why. I'd read about this tip a couple of different places, and I thought I would pass it along here, as it's been working pretty well for me so far.  Every time I've stopped (either to type up what I've written, or to take a break), I'm stopping mid-sentence.  It means that, when I come back to it, I have a good idea of what the next few words will be...

Hello, all!  For those of you who get bored with Nano-update posts, I'm going to try to keep this brief, but I'm also planning to use this space as a way to "take a break" without taking myself away from the keyboard.  If I start surfing the net, I may never go back. So far the Church of Book and I are getting along pretty well.  Around 11pm last night, I realized that I wanted things to go in a different direction, but that was a whole hour before Nano started, so no problem, right?  (Incidentally, let me introduce you to  Seshat , the Egyptian goddess of writing, wisdom, and knowledge, also known as the Mistress of the House of Books.) This year's process is a little different from previous years.  Anyone who knew me in college knows that for big papers, I would draft them long-hand (so many trees died for the sake of my senior thesis), and then typed them up later.  This was in part because it forced me to edit when I retyped it, but primarily i...

This is a difficult thing for me to write, but I think putting it down on virtual paper will help.  There are loads of blogs and books and magazine articles out there that give writing advice, and the main point comes down to one thing - as Chuck Wendig so eloquently put it,  shut up and write . It's not bad advice - a writer writes, after all, and nothing gets written if someone doesn't sit down (or lie down, or stand up - however you feel comfortable) and write it.  I understand it completely, and it's certainly something I've tried to cleave to since I've decided that being a writer was more important to me than whining about wanting to be a writer.  However, that doesn't mean I write every day, and I know there are a lot of people in a similar situation to mine. In order to write, you have to be able to hold a pen or pencil, or type, or dictate, or in some other way cause words to bleed onto a page (whether digital or physical).  The act of bleeding word...

Speaking with my husband earlier today, I remembered one of the very first things he told me about role-playing games.  "Never touch another player's dice unless they give you permission," he had stated very seriously.  I remember smiling a little bit, but I took it to heart, figuring it was tied to gamer etiquette.  It is, in a way - many gamers feel that having someone else touch their dice might change the dice's luck. There are loads of other superstitions related to anything randomly determined, which makes sense in a way.  People in general will look for patterns and for anything that might cause randomness to work in their favor.  My mother played Bingo for a long time, and I went with her to the Bingo parlor and saw that some of these ladies would nearly come to blows if someone was sitting in "their" seat.  I saw a woman around the age of my grandmother who had about a dozen stuffed animals that she would line up in a particular order in front of...

Apologies for the late post - it's been a very busy weekend.  My 12-year-old niece has been visiting this weekend, and I took her to  GeekGirlCon , which was her very first convention. My niece is just starting to come into her own as a self-identifying geek, and she's not that aware of what kind of community is available to her.  She's begun to play video games, and she's started to spend time online with other gamers.  At the same time, she's living in an area that doesn't have the biggest geek community, and she's never spent much time in a face-to-face situation with other people who share her interests. The first thing she did was hurt herself, of course.  After that, though, she started to get excited about seeing other people like her, and people that didn't make her feel like she "stood out".  By the end of the convention, she said that she felt comfortable, and like she was with people who were like her.  It was one of the best exp...

It's been a rough few weeks in the writing world of the Stephie, and I think I can say that I've been blocked.  Now, I know that there are a ton of well-respected authors out there who say that writer's block is a myth, it doesn't exist, it's just an excuse for writers not to write.  It's all probably true, but that doesn't make the terror of the blank page that much easier.  For me, it means that I now feel guilty for not being able to get the words out, as well as frustrated.  Guilt combined with frustration is usually a good way to make sure I don't make any progress. I'm trying to work my way through it, which is significantly easier said than done, obviously.  I'm essentially using this blog post as a way to force some words onto a page, and hope that it'll get the words flowing a little more easily.  Considering it took about half an hour to write the last two paragraphs, I'm less than convinced that this is working. The latest ...

Everyone writes differently, and it takes everyone a little bit of time to get themselves in "the zone".  I've started meeting with a local, non-work writing group on Saturday mornings, and the vibe between that and my work-related writing group is very different. There's been a lot said about making the perfect writing environment, and getting yourself in the right mind set to write.  I've also heard that some writers try to avoid relying on specific rituals and setting up the perfect place, because it limits when and how you can write.  I can see both sides of the coin, and for myself, there are a couple of things that help, but I don't think they're absolutely necessary to get me to write.  They certainly help, and I definitely feel more productive when I have them.  It's pretty clear when you see what I carry in my bag with me at all times - a way to write, a way to listen to music, and a way to read. Music is something I have to have in pretty...

I'm getting ready to pull things together for this year's NaNoWriMo, and I'm trying to go about my research in a little bit more of an organized way.  I have a tendency to write until I come across something that I don't know (what kind of reference would a person born in 1920 recognize?  Did the Inca have buildings with doors?), stop writing, and then get into a black hole of research.  I have a bad habit of "wiki-hopping", where I go to one page on Wikipedia, which leads to another link that looks interesting, to another link...Next thing you know, I have twenty tabs open and I've suddenly started reading about Sing a Song of Sixpence. I've mentioned that I have a germ of an idea, and this is what I'm planning to work on for NaNoWriMo this year.  So far, I've written a of vignettes that are giving me a great idea of what my characters are like, which has been immensely helpful.  It's also helping me figure out what questions I need to a...

Last week, I listened to an interview with  Dan Simmons , in which he described an experience he had had in the early part of his writing career.  He had been in a writers' workshop, and a fellow participant had received a critique on his manuscript.  The teacher of the workshop had asked the participant how long he had been trying to write, and the participant said that he had written 64 novels.  The teacher then told him, in front of everyone, "You are not a writer.  You will never be a writer." Listening to this story sent a sudden chill down my spine.  The thing that frightened me was the idea of having someone say this to me.  I haven't invested as much time and energy into my writing as the participant at the writers' workshop, admittedly, but writing is something that I've been wanting to do ever since I realized that books were actually written be real people.  It's been a goal since I was a child, and the idea of someone telling me that...

Remember how I said I would come back to the idea of writing and gaming? Well, I've had a chance to think about it, and I realize it's not just gaming that ties into my writing, but also my day job within a legal department. Both gaming and legal writing require a level of consistency in language.  When drafting legal documents, contracts generally have some sort of glossary near the beginning or end of the document, outlining the defined terms.  The main thing to remember with those terms is that a defined term has to mean the same thing every time it's referenced.  It's a convenient way to both make it clear to anyone reading the document what the parties mean when they use a potentially ambiguous term, and also a standardized shorthand to refer to a specific idea.  Even though you wouldn't think it, legal writing can teach a writer a lot about being concise and clear.  Well, the important thing is to avoid the standard "legalese" of heretofore and ...

Growing up, I didn't speak Spanish all the time, though my mother is a first-generation Mexican-American who speaks Spanish fluently.  Although she didn't actively teach my brother and me Spanish, she did use certain phrases and worked their way into our family's lexicon, just because in her mind, it was faster or easier to get the point across in Spanish than in English. By this point, I feel comfortable saying that I can read and write Spanish fluently, but I don't speak it all that often.  Even so, there are some of the same phrases of my mother's that I hear coming out of my mouth when I'm not thinking.  It's easier and faster for me to say "fíjate" than it is to say "look at that!", even if I didn't actually know that's what it meant in English.  Even though my husband doesn't speak Spanish at all, he's learned what some of the phrases mean just through the way I use them.  Similarly, I've picked up on a couple ...

Lo these many moons ago, I studied acting.  I took some classes at an academy in London for a semester in college, and one of them was called "Modern Physicality".  No, I don't know why that was the name - just go with it. A few weeks into the semester, we did an exercise in that class where we each walked around the room and eventually paired up.  Each person had to try to imitate their partner's walk, and in the end we had to perform this by walking around in a circle, while the rest of the class watched.  One person would walk normally, and the other would imitate their walk behind them.  The class would call out suggestions for improvement, and finally the original person would be pulled aside while their mimic would continue the imitation. I was paired with a woman who was fairly confident, and walked with a swing in her hips and her head up to face the world.  It took me a few tries to get the walk, because I had to fight my natural tendencies, bu...

A bit of a shorter post today, as I have many and many a thing to do before I flee for  GenCon .  This is the eighth or ninth year I've gone, and I always go as a demonstrator for  Asmodee Games .  It's a ton of fun, though a touch on the exhausting side, so who knows how much actual writing will get done this week? I've noticed that over the past ten years or so, while I've become more serious about my writing, I've also spent more time playing games (mostly board games and roleplaying games).  Both types of games have definitely influenced my writing, and my writing experience has influenced my game play.  I hope to get into this in more detail another week, but I'm curious - of those of you who write, do you also game?  Do you feel like there's an impact between one activity and the other? Have a good week, my friends!

I'm not sure about everyone else, but I have story idea overload on a regular basis.  Some image will come to mind, or a phrase, or a plot idea, and I know I need to grab onto it before it disappears back into the wild before I have a chance to do anything with it.  These ideas are plot bunnies, and they are hard as anything to wrangle sometimes. My main storage space is a Google Document (appropriately titled "Plot Bunnies") that I can access online and on my phone.  It's one of the easiest ways for me to jot down what I'm thinking of before it vanishes, and it gives me access to those ideas later if I get stuck.  Now, because I'm usually writing them down frantically while trying to get enough detail across that I'll know what I was talking about, there's a level of surrealism that pops up.  Things like "soul lever" and "honey blood" are just there, with no context whatsoever.  Admittedly, a lot of time there is no context to gi...

I thought it might be nice to try something new this week.  If you watch my Goodreads profile, you'll see that I tend to read a lot of different kinds of books.  Of late, I've become hooked on short story anthologies, as they give me such a broad range of stories and styles in one convenient package.  The best anthology I've read recently is John Joseph Adams'  Help Fund My Robot Army!!! The premise of the anthology is that each story is told as though it were a project page on a crowdfunding site such as Kickstarter or Indigogo.  The format is pretty well restrained, as the author is limited to essentially a sales pitch, different levels for backers, updates, and occasionally some conversation through backer comments. Even with these restrictions, the authors who wrote the stories that make up this anthology are able to use every little bit to create characters and worlds that feel completely fleshed out.  For example, Jake Kerr's story "A Memorial to ...

Something that every person has to deal with at some point is pain.  Be it physical or purely emotional, how a person handles pain says a lot about that person, and people can learn a lot about themselves when they have to encounter pain of some sort. I find that figuring out how a character reacts to pain is a great way to flesh out a character.  It's usually just a thought experiment, though occasionally I'll write a brief scene to help me solidify the things I learn about that character.  For example, I'll put the character in a situation that would cause the "average person" some sort of emotional pain - the death of a family member.  Finding out how the character reacts to that brings up a ton of questions right away: How close is the character to the family member in question? How does the character react externally, in public? How does the character react privately? Is there anyone that the character would feel comfortable expressing their pain to...

One of the nice things about having a lazy Saturday at home is that something random on TV will spark inspiration.  This weekend, it was the History Channel (which, every once in a while, remembers that their focus is history ), and  101 Objects that Changed the World .  The list is basically a bunch of tangible items that represent some major change in the world, or some major event in history.  It includes things like the hard hat (which allowed major buildings and bridges to be built safely), the cannon ball shot at Fort Sumter (beginning of the US Civil War - the list is a bit US-centric, shockingly enough), and the Coca-Cola contour bottle (first major company to use uniform packaging). It made me wonder what objects would be considered "essential" in a world that I'm currently building.  There's the big important thing, in this case a golden rope that magically binds the different territories of the land together, but that's not something that the averag...

Happy late Fourth of July to those of you who celebrate!  I sincerely hope you all still have as many fingers as you started with.  Naturally, the recent holiday made me think of how to create and celebrate the holidays in the worlds I'm building, and how they would look to outsiders. For example:  Between the ages of eleven and fourteen, my family and I lived in a Naval station in Spain.  We lived "off-base", in a gated community where several houses had been leased by the US military and the rest of the community was made up of local civilians.  On the Fourth of July, the only place where anything was really happening was on the base itself, as the day wasn't any kind of holiday to the rest of the country. My father was never a big fan of crowds, and we knew that the base would be filled to the brim with homesick Americans watching the fireworks and listening to "God Bless America" while hoisting their beers.  Instead of going on base to celebrate wit...

It's coming up on July, which means the year's second Camp NaNoWriMo will be coming up.  I'm going to give it another shot, but this time I'm going to do something a little bit different.  Instead of working on the plot of something I already have started, I'm going to spend some time world-building for the Epic Epic of Epicness. To explain a little further, I've had this vague idea for a world in which several territories are tied together under the aegis of a magical rope.  I have a good idea of what story I ultimately want to tell in this world, but I need to build the world first so I know what I have to play with.  So, my idea is to spend next month writing what are essentially entries in a history book of the world.  In the end, I'm basically going to be writing a lot of words that will probably not see the light of day, but they're going to make telling a story a heck of a lot easier for me. This is the first time I've ever done any kind o...

So, I'm going through my notes on a plot bunny that's been sitting and waiting patiently for a year or two, because I want to give it a bit of a shot for the next Camp NaNoWriMo.  I had developed a timeline, which was helpful, but just reading it over made me realize that there were a lot of unanswered questions I would need to work with.  I started writing some of those questions down, and realized that it might not hurt to have a generalized questionnaire for world- and plot-building.  And so, I share with you.  Feel free to let me know of any other questions you think could be helpful! 1.  What does the average person in your setting do for a living? 2.  How does the average person in your setting live day to day? 3.  How does the average person become educated? 3a.  What obstructions are there to education in your setting? 4.  What kind of person is your main character when we first meet him/her? 5.  What kind of person is you...

So, last week I made the mistake of reading an article that I knew was going to make me angry.  I know, I know - someone was wrong on the internet, and I fell into the trap of reading about it.  Still, it gave me something to think about. The article on  Slate  was regarding young adult books, and how adults should "feel ashamed" for reading them.  One of the main arguments the author made against the YA world was that they are escapist.  This, to me, seems ridiculous.  I don't read fiction to immerse myself into the trials and tribulations of today's world, exactly as I am living it at this moment; I read fiction to go to a different world, or even a different part of this world.  I read, in fact, to escape.  I'm finding it hard to believe that escaping in that way is a bad thing. One thing that I've learned from writing is that sometimes, you have to step away from a story and do something else for a bit.  It gives you a chance to ...

Apologies for the radio silence last week.  The US holiday weekends always throw me off my rhythm, and I never realize how much of a creature of habit I am until my routine gets disrupted.  The plan is to be back on track now, so we'll see how long that lasts. Speaking of getting back on track...I freely admit that I've been neglecting my stories woefully.  Without something like NaNoWriMo to give me a goal to aim for, and without a group of like-minded creative types to bounce ideas off of, I apparently just let things drift away.  While I am self-motivated in many other areas in my life, evidently I need to do some more work when it comes to creative ventures. I wonder, on occasion, if I'm just fooling myself with this whole "I'm going to be a writer!" plan.   Imposter syndrome  and I know each other very well, and it's never more obvious than when I'm trying to be creative in some way.  Who am I to think that people will want to read what I have...

This past weekend, I went to the town in Maryland where I went to high school for a friend's bridal shower.  I've been back once or twice since I've moved to the West coast, but not to the town itself, and I was nervous.  I don't have the best of memories of high school, so I wasn't sure what to expect. One of the places I was able to get to was the public library near my old high school.  I worked there most of the time I was in high school, and it was the place (other than the theater at school) were I spent the most time, especially after my father died.  While I had always loved books, that library was the first place where I felt comforted by the presence of so many books in one place.  Bookstores were always a little too cold, but the library...the books were welcoming, the tables and ridiculously uncomfortable chairs were the perfect place to hide when things got to be too much.  Even when I wasn't working, I still spent countless hours hiding out,...

I've always been a re-reader.  Growing up, my father instilled in me the desire to buy or otherwise obtain books that I could keep, rather than borrowing them, so I could always re-read them if I wanted to.  Naturally, this led to the kind of library that causes moving companies to glare daggers at you, but that's beside the point. I discovered early on that there are some books that I enjoy re-reading multiple times, because they make me feel better.  Something about revisiting a story I already know well, and characters I've met before, can be very soothing.  Some of them are books I read about once a year; others I cling to when I need something specific, even if it's undefinable.  Below are some of my favorites: A Wrinkle in Time  - probably my favorite book of all time.  This was the book that taught me it was OK to have a female protagonist who wasn't the prettiest/smartest/best at everything, but rather someone a little more like me.  I...

So, April ended and my Camp Nanowrimo story...didn't.  I managed to make a little over half of my goal, but there's no winning certificate for me this year.  I tried to figure out why that was, since Nanowrimo has gone pretty well for me the last few years. One of the big issues I came across was that I lost interest in the story I was writing.  By about ten thousand words in, I realized that I was having a hard time caring about what happened to my characters.  Even as they were doing things that were off-script (as characters are wont to do), it didn't really interest me.  I found myself drawn back to the world of Paranormal Investigations, which had been put on the shelf for a few months. Once I shifted to the other story, my momentum moved much faster than before.  I knew these characters, I'd spent time with them, and I cared about what happened next - all of these things were lacking in the original story I tried to write.  Honestly, what it ...

Just a quick post to let you know that I survived Norwescon (and it was excellent) and that I'm horribly behind on Camp Nanowrimo, so I'll be spending the next three days playing catch up.  Wish me luck!  I'll have a longer blog post next week.

By this time on Thursday, I'll be at  Norwescon , a local science fiction and fantasy convention with some gaming and alternative lifestyle panels thrown in.  I haven't been to this convention in a long time, and this will be the first I'll be going and focusing on my writing. I'm still working my way through Camp Nanowrimo, though it's going slower than I had hoped.  Some new characters appeared out of nowhere, and for some reason I decided to write it in first-person present tense.  For the most part it's working, but I still have a feeling that it's something that'll have to be fixed in post.  I'm hoping that I'll be able to spend some time in the writing panels at the convention, and get some inspiration (or at least, some tips on what not to do) while I'm there. There's also just something so beautiful about going away from home and away from the day-to-day obligations.  I won't get as much written as I want to, because I alw...

The last few things I've written have involved a fair amount of research and world-building, which can be the kind of rabbit hole that Alice would envy.  Over the years, I've found a couple of ways to keep myself from getting completely lost in the backstory, but it's definitely a work in progress. I admit, I usually start with Google and Wikipedia when I'm looking for historical details.  If nothing else, they are great places to begin and (usually) find links to more academically-respectable resources.  Often if I just need to know something quick and concrete (what year did Pizarro land in South America for the first time?), this is where I'll stop.  I can find the information that I need, and note it down somewhere that I'll be able to find it again - this is the part I used to have a hard time with.  I use Scrivener now for a lot of my note-taking and outlining, and it makes it easier to find all the bits of randomness that I've found across the inter...

I follow many, many blogs on writing and other subjects (including pictures of cats - that's 85% of the internet, isn't it?), and Chuck Wendig's blog  terribleminds  had a really interesting post a while back.  Basically, it's a set of questions to see how you're doing in the realm of writing.  I thought, what better place to answer them than on my blog?  Plus, it saves me from coming up with a new blog post.  Huzzah! a) What’s your greatest strength / skill in terms of writing/storytelling? World-building.  I tend to spend a lot of time figuring out what the world looks like, and why things happen the way they do.  I also do a reasonably good job figuring out pacing and timing for my stories. b) What’s your greatest weakness in writing/storytelling? What gives you the most trouble? Exposition.  I tend to get into the Department of Backstory when trying to explain some important piece of information to the reader, and just end up with ...

There appear to be two schools of thought (at least) regarding how much preparation should go into writing fiction.  One is the outline - giving yourself a framework in which to write, and knowing what the ending will be before you write a single word of the beginning.  This requires more up-front effort, but can make it easier when fleshing out the outline by going from point to point.  The more detailed the outline, the more information you know ahead of time that will inform your writing. Pantsing, on the other hand, is writing by the seat of your pants - thus the name.  You don't know what the ending will be before you start writing, and it's possible you don't know what the beginning will be, either.  You start with a vague idea of what you'd like to write, maybe a couple of character sketches, and you just start writing and see what happens.  You may have a a few plot points that you know you want to work in somehow, but you don't know where or how ...

For the last few years, I've attempted to do  NaNoWriMo , which basically means I've driven myself crazy trying to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  I've "won" three times so far, so I've decided to up the ante and try to tackle Camp NaNoWriMo this year. For those of you who've never encountered this, NaNoWriMo happens every November.  A large community builds up around the NaNoWriMo website, and in individual writing groups as everyone tries to encourage each other to make their word counts for the day and win.  The years I've won have been years in which I had a good group of people also attempting NaNo, and set times to meet with them to write.  That last part was critical, as it gave us a chance to bounce ideas off of each other and talk our way through sticking points.  While writing is, in general, a solitary activity, it can certainly benefit from having other people around who are also engaging in the same activity. Camp NaNoWriMo is essenti...

My apologies for going radio silent on you last week.  After returning from the land of ice and snow (aka Minnesota), I couldn't quite get my feet under me again.  The experience of being surrounded by family again did, however, give me a few ideas that I needed to let sit for a little while before I could express them. My older brother and his family (wife and eleven-year-old daughter) drove from Baltimore to Minnesota for the funeral.  I hadn't realized it at the time, but his wife and daughter had never met this side of the family before, and so there was a lot of introductions to be made.  As with most family gatherings, there were lots of stories to be told, and my sister-in-law and niece were fascinated by them, as they'd never heard them before.  I found out later that my older brother doesn't talk much about his family life, so they don't hear many tales from the past from him. What was interesting to me was what kinds of stories everyone told. ...