Category Archives: Just Stuff

Just my babbling, website related stuff — or whatever doesn’t fit in the other categories ;)

Just Stuff, Poetry, Shades of Green

Welcome 2010

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So, it’s a whole new year. That’s what the calendar says anyway.

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. There’s no clever reason for it, I just don’t. Perhaps it’s just to be contrary. In fact, when we quit smoking several years back my husband and I made a point of doing it on December 30th rather than waiting a day or two because we didn’t want people to mistakenly think it was a New Year’s thing. Yeup. We really are that ornery 🙂

Still, this year is looking like it might be better than its predecessor. I feel like I’m beginning to crawl out of the grip of the depression I’d been fighting with over recent months. That’s a good thing for so many reasons, the least of which is not that it means writing is easier for me, it’s less of a struggle to focus and things might actually get done. Might.

Also, I have some upcoming publications I’m excited about. Shades of Green is obviously near the top of that list, but there’s also the six word memoir book from Harper’s Perrenial and a lot of poetry. I love the work I did for the November poem-a-month challenge and while I’m still working on placing most of it, I’m ridiculously excited to share it with you all. Soon, I hope. Soon.

What about you? What are you excited about for this coming year?

Just Stuff

Crawling Out of the Story

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I did a lot of writing on Saturday, and a whack of revision on Sunday. As often happens when I’ve spent a lot of time and emotional energy working on a story, I found that long after I’d stepped away from the computer physically, I was still very much there mentally. Jo noticed that I wasn’t quite myself and I tried to explain, but my mind and attention being divided I’m not sure I did a good job.

I was still crawling out of the story.

When I first step away from the computer I’m still very deliberately and consciously thinking about the story I’d been working on. Should I do this, or that? How would that character really react to the other thing? Making mental notes of things I need to remember to add, change or take out. Making physical notes in case my mental ones fail. However, even after I’m done that and I’m not deliberately thinking about the work, I am disconnected from reality.

Not completely. You don’t need to call me a shrink, but that part of me which is always sort of outside myself (really, don’t call a shrink) observing things and taking notes is bigger than usual. I feel like I’m wading through a thick mental fog, and it takes some time to clear.

It doesn’t always happen, and seems to be mostly after the more intense writing/revising sessions I have. It’s an interesting phenomena, one I need to consider more in order to describe better perhaps. Anyway, I thought I’d share 🙂

Writers, tell me sometimes this happens to you too. What about people with different occupations and hobbies, do you expirience something similar, or do writers have the market cornered on this one?

Just Stuff

Walking to Mordor

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I am a nerd.

I’m also overweight.

I came across this interview with Jay Lake and Elizabeth Bear on Shrink Geek and when I read it learned about Eowyn Challenge. This is so incredibly full of awesome. I think it has inspired me to get off my butt and start exercising again.

So basically you get to walk to Mordor, or Rivendell or wherever you want from Tolkein’s books. How cool is that?

I haven’t planned out my route yet or decided who I’m going to follow, but I am definitely going to do this. I’m going to get an audiobook version of Lord of the Rings (or The Hobbit, I haven’t decided which path I’m going to take yet) and listen to it as I go. I’ll be using my stationary bike rather than walking (winter is coming dudes) and I think this will be lots of fun.

Care to join me? C’mon, you know you want to.

I’ll have my route planned and hopefully audiobook in hand and be good to start Monday. I’d love it if you were coming along with me.

Just Stuff, See The Sky Again, Shadows

What about second first drafts?

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The first draft of anything is crap. These are words I say over and over. I tell them to myself, I tell them to people on NaNoLJers, and I’m writing them here now. The idea of the first draft, for me, is just to get it down. Get it out of my brain and onto paper. Once I’ve done that I can revise it and make it better, but the first copy doesn’t have to be good.

But what about the second first draft?

I’ve decided to re-write SHADOWS, but so far I haven’t actually started that because I’ve paralyzed myself by over-thinking it and having too high of expectations. I have been unable to make my brain accept that this is going to be a first draft…because it’s not…it’s a rewrite, but it’s the first draft because I’m starting over, or should I? What about the parts of SHADOWS I really like? Maybe I should just really seriously revise it and add some chapters to the middle to deal with a couple issues I had with it. But if I do that, won’t it be choppy and over-revised?

See?

This is just a small sample of what my brain does to me.

I’m beginning to think that I should just walk away from SHADOWS for now and work on something else, at least until I can gain some perspective on it. Though, if I do that, won’t it just be there, in the corner of my mind, taunting me?

I think it might.

What do you do when it’s time for a big revision/rewirte? Start from scratch or save the bits of the original that you liked? Do you give yourself permission to write crap, or is it not -really- a first draft in your mind? Does your brain mess with you as much as mine does me? And what am I going to work on at my write-in tonight?

Maybe SEE THE SKY AGAIN. It’s the backstory for one of the characters in SHADOWS and one of my critique partners said, “NAME is one of my favorite characters from SHADOWS so I have high expectations for his backstory…” when this woman says she has high expectations she means it LOL And I don’t want to disappoint her or anyone, so I’m pseudo-paralyzed there too. I need to get over that one and just remember that the first draft of anything is crap.

The first draft of anything is crap. The first draft of anything is crap. I can do this! Hopefully if I chant this for the next couple hours it will re-penetrate my brain and I’ll be able to report back tonight that I’ve made some progress on SEE THE SKY AGAIN and I can focus on that while I figure out what to do with SHADOWS.

The first draft of anything is crap. The first draft…

Goals, Just Stuff, Personal

Attention Span of a Gnat

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I have been struggling lately. You may have noticed, it’s been a recurring theme for the past couple years and it just keeps getting worse. I have the attention span of a gnat nowadays. I look back at the things I used to accomplish in a day and that list has been getting smaller and smaller for the past 4 years or so. Unacceptable.

I have the attention span of a gnat.

This needs to change.

After a lot of consideration and discussions with friends who find themselves in similar positions as well as those who don’t, I have a theory. I think I have trained myself to be unfocused. This was obviously unintentional, but I think it’s what happened.

A few years ago when I was building websites and such for a living I had a livejournal and an ICQ account. I would check LJ once a day and keep ICQ up and running while I worked. That meant I could communicate with people if I needed or wanted to, but I wasn’t leaving the window or webpage I was on to do it. Fast forward to now and I have a LiveJournal, a Facebook account, a couple blogs and a twitter account. Discounting the blogs because they don’t fall into the same category — I have a lot more distractions. Firstly, Facebook and twitter update a lot more often than LJ. My twitter feed changes every couple minutes, that means I’m refreshing that page every couple minutes and in order to do that, I’m leaving the window I’m currently working in. Add to that the ability to get sidetracked following links or playing games on Facebook and really, it’s no wonder my brain is so fragmented and frazzled.

This hasn’t just affected my work, by the way. Look at my World of Warcraft account as another example. I play on two servers (one less than the other). On each of those servers I have 10 characters. 10. That’s the maximum. Why? Because I don’t seem to be able to focused on any one toon for very long.

The good news is I figure if I trained myself to be unfocused, unproductive and to have a short attention span, I can untrain myself too. (Is untrain a word?). Starting immediately during work hours I am only going to allow myself to check Facebook and Twitter once a day. That’s it. Just once. The same goes for Livejournal. During my off-hours I’ll ease up on myself a little bit. I will continue to check Twitter while I’m taking a long flight in WoW for example, but I need to force myself to focus when I should be working and maybe actually get something done now and then. The way things are right now is ridiculous.

Wish me luck, I might need it.

Just Stuff

SEO Grade

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Amber Stults had a link from her site that would grade your website’s SEO friendliness. I was curious so I checked mine. I was pleased with the results and also enjoyed the suggestions for improving my SEO ratings.

If you’re interested in plugging your site in you can do it at http://website.grader.com/ .  Since the code for the badge given to me by that site is only working on select browsers, I’ll also just come out and say, my grade was 89. Did you beat me? 🙂

Just Stuff

Wasps and Shadows

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Wasps by our front door

Every year wasps come and build a nest by our front door and every year we knock it down. The nests are never in the same spot, but always in the same general area. They are persistent. If they would just build the nest somewhere out of the way we’d probably leave them alone but it’s a safety hazard to have a wasp nest right by your front door. Ya know, because people need to walk there. That means we don’t really have much choice but to destroy it.

I’m especially sympathetic to the wasps today, because I can relate to them. They keep buzzing around, building nests and having them knocked down and they are going to keep doing that until they find the perfect spot. One where we can leave them in peace and co-exist. I keep writing and revising SHADOWS trying to get it to that perfect spot. One where a reader will be hooked from the first paragraph, devour it in one sitting and ask for more.

I suspect both the wasps and I have a lot more work in our future.

I like SHADOWS’ current incarnation. I like it a lot but I think I’m going to rewrite it again. I received my critique of the first two chapters back from Jim C. Hines and it was fantastic. He showed me the parts that worked and what didn’t and gave me some suggestions for improvement. After thinking them over and really pondering the middle of the story, I think I can tell a better tale if I start from scratch.

I have a couple things to clear off my plate here first (a paper to write for school, a final exam on the 26th, that sort of thing) and then I’m going to start over. My plan is to really map out the plot, add a lot more detail to it and then start writing about July 13th. Why so long away, you ask? Well, I will be doing the outline thing and then I’ll be on vacation in San Francisco from July 5th to 12th. I think I’d be deceiving myself to think I’ll be doing any work there LoL

So yes, once the 13th comes I will be back to work on SHADOWS. Unfortunately for the wasps, they’ll be rebuilding a lot sooner than that.

*It’s probably not a good thing that it took me nine shots to get a picture of their nest that I liked, is it? LOL

Just Stuff, Sister Margaret

A Helping Hand

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Help Catherynne M. Valente

I don’t actually know [info]yuki_onna or [info]justbeast . I’ve never read any of Catherynne’s work and they aren’t on my friends list. That being said, when I read about their troubles I wanted to help. So I’m donating ad space on Niteblade, a copy of Lost Innocence and a copy of Sister Margaret to the auction to raise some money for them.

My auction is here. Please stop by and place a bid. For $5 you could win two great things to read and ad space on Niteblade Magazine. Plus, you’ll be help some people who really need it. If you can think of something else I could throw in on the auction to make it better let me know, I’m very open to suggestions.

Just Stuff

Pseudo-Secret Project

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Productive again? Yay!

My focus, which has been sadly lacking since November appears to be making short appearances these days. It’s nothing fantastic and I’ve not suddenly turned into a writing machine, but I’ve been more productive than in ages.

One thing that has helped is the pseudo-secret project I’m working on these days. I’ll share more details soon…ish, but I still need to pin down a couple details first. I’m excited about it though. I’ll likely spill the beans about it on my newsletter first, but information on the blog will follow soon after.

I’m also working on two collaborative projects. Kyle Cassidy ( LJ ~ Twitter ~ Website ) recently set up a project where he paired random strangers up to work on something, anything, together. Long story short, I am working in two collaborations as a direct result. Each is hugely different from the other and I’m really enjoying them both. I feel like they are really pushing me out of the rut I’d been in and sort of forcing productivity. This is a good thing because if I do it long enough it will become a habit again LOL

Now, so long as the baseball game we’re supposed to go to tonight doesn’t get rained out, I’ll be golden. Please don’t rain. Danica has been looking forward to this all week and passed up a chance to go to a movie and a slumber party for this game. Please don’t rain…