Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo Friday Excerpts: Week Two

November 8, 2013 R. Parrish 10 Comments

It’s Friday again, and because I’m participating in the Absolute Write NaNo Excerpt Blog Chain that means another excerpt from my NaNoWriMo novel, Hollow Children (which I think I’m going to re-title. Possibly to just ‘Hollow’). This section has a whole whack of issues, but I promised myself I wouldn’t start editing before the first draft was done, so I’m swallowing my ego and sharing it warts and all.

Enjoy.

Running helps. As long as Morgan keeps her eyes straight, her right shoulder to the old prison and focuses all her attention on the sound of her shoes on the sidewalk, running helps.

It’s quiet. The only sounds are her feet hitting the pavement, her breathing loud in her ears and an occasional bird. The sound of traffic is a dull hum in the background but she hasn’t seen a moving vehicle in several minutes while she’s run laps around the four city blocks that contain the decrepit prison. It’s getting late enough that the sky is bruising and the streetlights are coming on, but their light is dim and there’s still more than enough sunlight to see without them.

The leaves are still on the trees but she can smell autumn’s bite in the air. She’s too warmed up from her exertions to feel it though. Her hoodie is tied around her waist and its hem slaps against the back of her knees as she runs.

Her body knows what to do, the movements are automatic and her mind is empty but for the one-two count of her feet on the sidewalk. One-two, one-two, left-right, left-right. She focuses on those numbers like she never does in math class, letting each one grow to fill her mind and push everything else out.

Usually she doesn’t have to count. Usually she just has to run. Usually, but not today. Today she walked in on her mother crying, so if she stops counting, Morgan knows the birdsong around her will be lost in the remembered sounds of twisted metal, screams and shattered glass.

As she rounds the northwest corner of the prison grounds something penetrates the barrier she’s put up around her thoughts. A voice. A very specific voice. Barry’s voice.

“Shit,” she whispers as her eyes flick one way and then the other, trying to discern where it’s coming from. Acoustics are weird around the prison grounds, the old prison and its outbuildings catch them and toss them around like a SOMETHING, and to make things worse the wind has chosen that precise moment to pick up and rattle the leaves in the trees.

The last thing in the world she wants is to have to deal with Barry. Especially f he’s with his friends, and if he isn’t, why would he be talking?

Finally she catches sight of him, he and his friends. They’ve just turned the corner and are walking toward her. That leaves her two choices. She can turn around and run back the way she’s just come from, or she can keep going and hope they leave her alone. She anticipates no joy from either choice. If she runs away they will know she is avoiding them and as soon as they sense any weakness they will be like a shark with chum in the water. History has shown her that. Still, the chances of them ignoring her as she runs straight at them are slim to none.

Well, if you’ve gotta go down, go down fighting.

The novel is going okay. It was really, really fighting me at first, but I feel like it’s developed a little bit of momentum. Which is good, I’m going to need it heading into week two since I don’t have a buffer like I usually do. Also, I haven’t written yet today, so I really ought to get on that…

Hollow, NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo Friday Excerpts: Week One

November 1, 2013 R. Parrish 4 Comments

Over at the Absolute Write Water Cooler there is a blog chain going on which I signed up to be a part of. In short, we are going to post excerpts from our NaNoWriMo novels each Friday. It’s kind of unfortunate that day one of NaNoWriMo falls on a Friday, but since it does I’m obligated to share an excerpt.

Excerpt from Hollow Children (a work-in-progress):

The house was dark when she entered it, and uncannily quiet. She shut the door behind her, turning the deadbolt in its place and learning her back against the solid wood with only the sound of her pounding heart and panting breath in her ears. She closed her eyes, wiped the palms of her hands on her thighs and willed her heart rate to slow, her breath to steady.

“Morgan?” Amy’s voice startled her and she jumped, eyelids flying open.

Amy stood across the kitchen, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb, looking at her quizzically. “Morgan,” she said again. “Are you all right?”

No. No, I am very much not all right. “Yes,” she forced a laugh which sounded weak even to her own ears. “Of course I’m all right. I just got startled by a bird while I was running, that’s all.”

The best lies are those with a grain of truth, at least that’s what they always said on the police shows she loved to watch on A & E. “Just let me grab a shower and then we can start dinner.”

Amy nodded but Morgan couldn’t help but notice the worry in her eyes and the tell-tale way her hand was moving inside the pocket of her hoodie, worrying the button she kept in there. It was a habit she’d developed since the accident, something she did whenever she was scared or worried.

“Really,” Morgan said, contorting her face into a smile. “I just had a little scare is all.”

“Okay,” Amy said, but her voice was flat, unconvinced. “But you don’t usually lock the door against birds.”

For a little kid she was pretty sharp, there wasn’t going to be any convincing her of this lie. Not tonight. Morgan was filled with an odd mixture of gratitude and resentment. She was glad Amy cared enough to, well, care, but she didn’t want to talk about it and her sister’s big hazel eyes were making her feel guilty for that. What could a BLANK year old understand about it anyway?

“Go play Minecraft,” Morgan snapped, pushing by Amy on her way to the shower. “I’ll call you when it’s time to set the table.”

The shower washed the sweat off her body, but it didn’t make her feel any cleaner.

The following links will lead you to the blogs of the other participants in this blog chain 🙂 I’m going to go see if I can get a few hundred more words done before dinner.

~ orion_mk3 ~ robjvargas ~ AshleyEpidemic ~ vertigo78 ~ bdwilson ~ amaliegreen ~ meowzbark ~ wittyblather ~ skunkmelon ~ sunflowerrei ~

Goals, Hollow, NaNoWriMo, NovPad

NaNoWriMo 2013 – Take Nine

November 1, 2013 R. Parrish 1 Comment

This month I am participating in my ninth NaNoWriMo challenge (Username: Midnyte If you’re participating feel free to add me. Drop me a line & I’ll return the favour). I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo yearly since 2003 (though I skipped one year because I just wasn’t feeling it). This year I’m going to write a new first draft of a story you’ve been listening to me talk about writing since July of 2011 — Hollow Children. For November I’ve taken all my previous abortive drafts, scenes and papers and stuck them in a drawer and I’m going to leave them there until this draft is done. I’ll peek at them again when it comes time to revise but I don’t want to get hung up on comparing drafts and such until I’ve got all the words on the page.

My biggest obstacle as a writer is myself, getting out of my own way and putting words on the page. That’s where NaNoWriMo comes in handy because for me the most difficult part of writing (even 1,667 words a day) is sitting my ass down and doing it. During November and NaNoWriMo I feel extra accountable and that helps me get my butt in the chair. So I’ll be doing 50,000 words on this draft in November and then hopefully continuing on until the entire draft is done. I’m hoping for somewhere around 80-90k altogether.

In addition, because sanity is overrated, I’m also going to be doing the November Poem A Day Challenge. The PAD challenges at Writer’s Digest (in November and April) have also become sort of a tradition for me and are the source of most of the poetry I write in a year. One of my favourite parts is that I know my friend Beth will be doing them too, and even though we don’t compare notes every day or whatever, as the month goes on we do check in with each other to see how it’s going, and it’s nice to feel like you’re not alone. This year I’m working on a sekkrit collaborative project with someone (not Beth) and I’ll be using the theme of that as my theme for NovPAD. It should be super efficient (which my vulture brain loves) and fun. Win/win.

Oh, and did I mention the renovations? We’re having our yard dug up and weeping tile installed starting the middle of the month… so that’ll be… fun.

I’ve also decided to drop out of the ‘Not the Whittakers‘ challenge I was participating in. Historically speaking the Whittakers have provided me with the incentive and momentum to write some great short story first drafts but this year I’m not really feeling it and am seriously time-challenged. Still, I should be kept plenty busy and challenged even in their absence 😉

Between NaNoWriMo, NovPad 2013, reading for Fae, promoting Metastasis, readying the December issue of Niteblade and just, ya know, having a life, I think I’ll be kept pretty busy, but not quite as crazy as last month.

A to Z Challenge, April PAD, Books, Editing, Goals, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, NovPad, W1S1, Writing

Goals for 2013

January 11, 2013 R. Parrish 7 Comments

Each year I like to set myself some concrete goals and share them publicly on my blog. Not only does this give me some sort of vision of what I want to accomplish over the year, it adds a feeling of accountability to help keep me motivated and on track. My goals for 2013 are:

Health

Lose 25lbs
Successfully complete the P90x program (I’m giving myself permission to swap Cardio X workouts in for Plyometric ones because I worry about my ankle and also, I’m a bit of a wussy)
No energy drinks
Significantly cut the amount of sugar in my diet. I have a complicated set of rules for this for myself, but I don’t want to bore everyone with sharing them.

School

Begin another course (or two) toward my degree no later than April 1st and complete it/them successfully.

Editing/Publishing

Sell my cancer anthology idea to a publisher.*
Edit the cancer anthology, making sure the end result is something I am proud of.
Promote the hell out of the anthology, ensuring that there actually are royalties to donate to charity.
Continue to pursue my sekkrit projeckt with CJD
Increase Niteblade’s readership and distribution
Begin offering Niteblade in more file formats
Hold a successful fundraiser for Niteblade
Produce a NaNoLJers anthology if sufficient interest exists

Writing

Participate in The Whittaker Prize
Successfully complete the weekly version of Write 1 Sub 1. For the ‘Write’ portion of this challenge I will count completed short stories or poems as well as individual scenes from longer works. By allowing myself to count individual scenes I will be able to work on longer works and still participate in W1S1
Participate in Writo De Mayo
NaNoWriMo and both camp NaNoWriMos are all optional
Finish writing poems for all the 2012 NovPad prompts
Actually successfully complete the AprilPad or NovPad properly, without having to make up prompts after the month has passed
Self-publish “Aphanasian Stories”
Look into the practicality of bundling and re-releasing some of my previously published short stories as ebooks
Follow through on my 2012 plans for my zombie poetry

Reading

Read at least 30 books

Misc

Participate in A Month of Letters
Do the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (bonus points if I come up with a theme this year)
Blog at least once a week
Take a social media retreat for one week a month all year
Attend WorldCon 2012 in Texas
Post writing prompts/exercises in NaNoLJers on odd numbered Mondays
Run and participate in the writing bingo in NaNoLJers
Don’t forget that life is for living, not leveling

Phew! I’m kinda exhausted even just looking at that list, exhausted and excited. I’ve set up some real challenges for myself, but if I manage to pull them off imagine how fantastic a year that will be!

*I know I’ve already accomplished this goal, but I hadn’t when I started mentally composing this list and since I achieved this goal in 2013 I’m still putting it on the list. This is not me putting things on here just so I can cross them off.

Hollow, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, Shadows, Twixt

The Language of Flowers

December 1, 2012 R. Parrish 14 Comments

Issue number twenty two of Niteblade Magazine was released at midnight last night.

It is fantastic.

This issue includes four stories and five poems, each of them unique and beautiful.

Table of Contents:

The Curse of the Reaper’s Wife
Hieronymus
The Language of Flowers
The Garden
The Maiden-Harp
Tonight, Tonight
The Orphean Habit
The House That Did Not Breathe
Glacial Raft

I’m going to resist the urge to talk a bit about each piece here because, really, if I’m going to editorialize (and I’m not) I should do that in Niteblade not my personal blog. Still, it is a fantastic issue. I think everyone reading for it, from the slush readers to Alexa and myself, were super selective and aiming for beautiful language and something unique in the story. I look at our line up and there are no poems, no stories that make me go “Well…”. When Jo was doing the layout and asked me, as he usually does, “Which is your favourite story?” followed by “Which is your favourite poem?” it was not an easy question to answer. That, I think, is a pretty damn good indicator of quality, which is totally what we are striving for at Niteblade.

While I think all the work in this issue are fantastic and very much worth reading I am especially proud of our production team for this issue. There were so many things going on in the background, any single one of which could have legitimately kept us from being able to put this issue out on time, but they didn’t. There were family deaths, horrible sicknesses, ill pets and fewer slush readers than usual and we still managed to make it work. Go us!

~*~

On a completely unrelated note — NaNoWriMo.

I won.

When I first did NaNoWriMo it really was a challenge for me and I struggled and sacrificed to make it to the finish line. Then, with practice and some changes in my life (ie: giving up my other jobs), NaNo became really quite easy. Just this thing I did. The most difficult part was running NaNoLJers during it, and then, when Arnold took over that for me, cheering on my teammates on Team Calliope and, this year, Team Thalia. This year though, this year it was a challenge again.

I am depressed these days and pretty low on energy to begin with so juggling dealing with my Mom’s death, Indiana’s sickness, Niteblade and NaNoWriMo in addition to everything else in my day-to-day life was pretty tricky. But I did it. And I am so proud of myself for that 🙂

One way I managed to reach my word count each day was by using the Write or Die desktop edition with the backspace key disabled. That helped push me toward my word goal but it also resulted in a very, very messy manuscript. I would start to write something and mess it up somehow and, because I couldn’t use my backspace I would just put my cursor behind the screwed up word and hit enter a few times to get it out of my face. For example, I’ve copied and pasted the following directly out of my mss:

er :I think

coo a in

eh se

p .

it

e Cal Sanda sa

‘I t e jo

faz v she lovere lowever

I also wrote in Kamikaze mode, which meant if I stopped writing, it would start deleting my words. Most of the words at the end of the manuscript looked a lot like the gibberish you see above this, but still, they were words and I didn’t want to lose them. So when I got stuck for a word or a phase I wanted to use, I wouldn’t really stop to think about what I wanted to say, I would just write a note for myself and keep going. The same thing if I realised I’d written something contradictory or perhaps forgotten something important (ie: suddenly the MC is holding a torch when there hadn’t been any torches anywhere around three paragraphs before). Some of that resulted in some amusing notes for myself. Like these:

“You’ll be fine,” he replied, and VERBED the cover into place.

Left alone in his room, *** I DON”T WANT TO WRITE THIS SCENE RIGHT NOW ***

he hoped that wasn’t going to be seen as WORD but

***THIS CHANGES, RIGHT?***

*** THIS IS DUMB, DUDE HEARD HIM TAKE THAT OFF TEH WALL AND HE”S NOT A MORON. CUT G ***

***DAMN IT, WRONG POV. RWArR. YES. RWArR!*** (my backspace key was disabled for these notes to myself too, so… typos!)

*** CHECK AND SEE WHAT SHE”S ACTUALLY WA WEARING LOL ***

“Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” ***GOOD QUESTION***

and my personal favourite:

her voice, cold as *** SOMETHING THAT ISN”T ICE ***

Ahhh… good times 🙂

This novel isn’t finished and it’s my plan to complete it before I move on to anything else, but one of the wonderful parts about writing everyday is that it becomes a habit and then it’s easier. What’s more, it opens my mind and I feel my creative juices flowing easier and more freely than usual. While working on this novel I had three separate epiphany-type moments about how to fix the problems in some of my other novels (Hollow Children, Twixt and Shadows). I intend to keep Shadows in my drawer despite my idea for its improvement (at least for now) but I’m super excited about the possibilities for the other two stories.

Yay!

As for November Poem a Day? I fell behind early and never managed to catch up however, those prompts aren’t going anywhere so I’m just going to keep working through them outside of November. Because I can.

Just Stuff, Personal, Stream of Consciousness

Faster Than The Speed of Life

November 14, 2012 R. Parrish 8 Comments

For the most part I have a fantastic life. I’m relatively healthy, I have friends and family who love me (and who I love), I’m able to spend my days doing what I love (writing and editing) and, ya know, overall things are pretty good. They aren’t perfect, of course, but they are pretty good. But it always seems like just when I’d really like a nice, quiet period in my life the most something happens to make sure I don’t get it.

My mom dying last month was… traumatic, to say the least. It was pretty sudden — she was doing well, and then suddenly she very much wasn’t. I’ve been working to come to terms with her loss and with all the circumstances around it, and I’ve been doing pretty well. I was down, of course, but grief is a funny thing — it comes at you in waves. I was able to get things done, still, to lead a more or less “normal” life. I kept busy, which helped, and thought “Hey, you know what would be a great idea? I’ll do NaNoWriMo and NovPad and get the December issue of Niteblade ready. No problem.”

Then life stepped up and said “Nu-uh. No you don’t.”

We have three cats. They are all awesome and all very different from one another. Indiana, Eowyn and Absinthe. Indiana is the cuddly one, Eowyn is the proud/bitchy one and Absinthe is the shit-disturber. On Friday we had to rush Indiana (you can see him in these pictures) to the animal hospital because he had an obstruction in his urethra. He was diagnosed with FLUTD (Feline lower urinary tract disease), admitted and catheterized under sedation. Before they performed the procedure they asked if we wanted to visit him to say goodbye. I couldn’t. Just the idea of visiting someone I loved in a hospital again after my Mom… I just couldn’t do it.

On Saturday, the hospital called to say there had been a complication in removing the catheter and Indy was going to require surgery to get it out. We consented to that. Very late on Sunday night he was released and we brought him home. When we went to pick him up at the animal hospital they brought him out in his (huge) cat carrier. I knelt down to see him and stuck my fingers through the bars. He rushed over from the back of the carrier and tried to bonk me through the bars, and when that didn’t work he just rubbed against my fingers as best he could with his cone of shame on. It made me cry. Jo and the receptionist pretended not to notice, because they are awesome.

Now he’s home, but the stress doesn’t stop. There’s money stress because stays in the animal hospital and emergency surgery are not cheap. We’re lucky in that we were able to pay for this without too much hardship, but if it becomes a recurring thing that may not remain true. What’s more, the urinary tract obstruction he had does tend to be a recurring thing, and if it happens and it’s not caught in time, it will kill him. Straight up. So we have to watch and make sure he’s not straining to pee or showing any of the other signs of obstruction.

But wait, there’s more! He has three medications to take; pain killers, antibiotics and antispasmodics. Happily Jo is all over keeping track of and dispensing that as it would break my brain. Seriously.

Indy also has a cone of shame on, and he can’t quite figure out how to eat or drink normally with it, so we are essentially hand-feeding him (or had been. We’ve recently decided to take the cone off when we are able to supervise him to make sure he’s not licking his incision, and hopefully he’ll feed himself). He’s not eating as much as we’d like (I think partly because of the cone and partly because he doesn’t like his new, expensive, prescription food). But he seems to be in good spirits and has lots of energy (in between painkiller doses, anyway), so I’m tentatively optimistic.

This is more than a little stressful on our other animals too. The other cats have to switch over to the same diet as Indy and they aren’t fans. Neither of them is eating as much as they should be. We can’t really feed them prescription kibble (which I think will help as they will be able to eat when they want, not just at mealtimes) at least until Indiana is out of his cone of shame (middle of next week) and able to drink enough water to make dry food a viable option for him. Even Tre’s (our dog) eating has to be altered because we can’t let him have hard food sitting in his bowl because Indy will steal it, eat it and obstruct again.

I freaking suck at ‘wait and see’ and this is one big-ass case of ‘wait and see’.

I’m not handling it very well. I’m the sort of stressed/depressed right now where all I want to do is sleep. That really isn’t good for NaNoWriMo, November Poem-a-Day, Niteblade, or, ya know, life.

I’m doing the best I can though, and I’m still writing. Not as much as I should be, and I’ve switched NaNo novels again to something that requires a little less thought than Hollow Children, but I’m writing. If Jay Lake can write through all the crap he’s been dealing with over the past five years, and all my friends on Team Thalia can write through the curve balls and hardships life throws their way, then I can write through this.

And besides, when I’m writing, when I’m actually in the middle of the action, then all this just goes away for a little bit. It’s only for a few minutes at a time, but I’ll take it. Oh yes, yes I will.

ETA: I spent the afternoon working on catching up on my NaNo project and I’m currently only about 2,500 words behind. Yay!

NaNoWriMo, Thoughts

Struggling

June 15, 2012 R. Parrish 4 Comments

Dear ________,

I’m struggling a bit this week. At first it felt like the beginnings of a slip into depression, but then I figured it out. I’m addicted to exercise.

Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t like exercise, but I’ve gotten to the point that if I don’t do it I’m groggy and unfocused and just plain bleh until I do. Unfortunately it took me until yesterday to figure that out so my week was not nearly as productive as it should have been, and the productivity I did manage to pull off was largely unrelated to my Camp NaNoWriMo project.

Sadly, I also have a lot of commitments this weekend that are going to keep me from being able to play catch up. In fact, they are pretty much guaranteed to make me fall further behind LOL

I’m not giving up though. I’m going to try to sneak some words in this morning before my sister comes over and I’ll steal time away to write whenever I can this weekend too. I expect by Monday I’ll still be significantly behind where I’m supposed to be for Camp NaNo but I’ll keep chugging along. Hey, if I have to I can ‘go to camp’ again in August to finish this up. Every word on the page is a victory, right? Just, ya know, a really small one 😉

And the week hasn’t been all bad by any means. I finished the first draft of a short story (if you call 8,000 words short, I’m tempted not to LOL) and had one of my zombie poems published. So, ya know, not all bad. Not all bad at all 🙂

Love,

Rhonda

Hollow, NaNoWriMo, Personal

Writing is a Battle…

June 7, 2012 R. Parrish 6 Comments

Dear ________,

I’ve enclosed a photo I wanted to share with you. I call this shot “Haunted Hospital” and when I took it several weeks ago I had no idea it was going to become a very important place in my novel. But lo and behold, that’s exactly what has happened. Not only is it where the story begins but I expect it to continue to be a very important locale throughout, sort of like the sun that the rest of the tale rotates around. Very cool, no?

I wasn’t sure what I was going to write to you about today. I don’t like writing too much about my stories while I’m working on them. I find if I share too much (via blogs, or conversation or anything) I lose the sense of urgency to write the story. It’s like, as soon as I’ve shared it with someone my brain is pretty sure that my job is done and it’s time to move on to the next story. That means in order to get the whole thing out of my brain and onto the page I need to keep it to myself for as long as possible. That meant talking about any Hollow Children specifics was out of the question, and who wants to read a dry list of daily word counts? Um, not me.

Then I snuck over to Alison Stone‘s cabin today to say hi before I started writing for the moment. She asked everyone who stopped by a question, “What motivates you?”

I have a post-it note stuck onto my laptop where I’ll see it everyday. It’s been stuck there for months and is starting to curl up on the edges and lose it’s glue. When it finally gives up and falls off completely I will copy the words from it onto another post-it note and stuck it on my laptop. In fact, I’m planning on getting them tattooed onto my arm. Eight words:

Writing is a battle with impatience and inertia.

I don’t know who to attribute that quote to. I think I picked it up from a textbook but I haven’t gone back through the one I think it might be to see if I’m correct.

That quote, that idea, that reality motivates me. It says yes, writing is hard work, but you know what? Anything worth doing is difficult. It says yes, Rhonda, you’re feeling bleh and you don’t want to do anything but lay in bed and sleep, but no one is going to write your words for you. It says holy crap, dude, you’re not in a race to reach the end of the story, slow down and let it unravel at its pace, not yours.

Writing is a battle, and it’s one I’m not willing to lose. Some days, some weeks, some months are harder than others but if you just keep fighting eventually you will be victorious.

That’s what motivates me.

Well, this month it’s that plus watching the little bars move up on my stats page for Camp NaNoWriMo… but ya know, whatever it takes to get words on the page, right?

Best,
Rhonda

p.s. I hear they are serving us sushi here tomorrow. *squee* Best. Camp. Evar.

Goals, NaNoWriMo, Two For Tuesday

T4T: Two Updates

June 5, 2012 R. Parrish 2 Comments

Dear _______,

I’m writing you from camp where I’m very busy writing the first draft of a novel tentatively called Hollow Children, but I thought I’d steal a quick moment away from working on it to bring you a fast Two for Tuesday. This Tuesday I’m going to share two quick updates.

Update #1: Work on Hollow Children is going better than I’d feared *knock wood*. I’m about 6,700 words in and I haven’t started writing yet today. There have been a couple interesting surprises to date in this draft. The sexual orientation of two characters changed and another character swapped genders. Whee! 🙂

Update #2: May is over and Writo De Mayo with it. I didn’t do very well on staying on track. According to my website my WdM goals were:
– Do the 200 Sit Ups Challenge (beginning on Week Two in Column Two) without straining or otherwise injuring my neck in the process (How’d it go? I kept forgetting. Honestly. I see you rolling your eyes, but I did. However, I was plenty active during May just in general, plus my daughter and I started the Couch to 5k running program, so I’m not going to hate on myself for missing this one)
– Stay on track for W1S1 (How’d it go? I was successful. I finished up a few poems and submitted a bunch of stuff.)
-Write the first draft of at least one new short story (not a poem)(How’d it go? It failed pretty miserably. I have a couple short story ideas I’m working on but nothing near to a completed draft)
-Write the first draft of a query letter for Shadows and get feedback on it(How’d it go? Well, I’m halfway done this one. I got the query letter written, but I haven’t asked for feedback yet)
–Get back to the HTRYN course I’m using to revise Twixt (and that I’ve neglected all April)(How’d it go? Well, I did get back on it, which is good, but now it’s back to being neglected for June while I work on Camp NaNo and the Whittakers)
–If I’m not successful in finishing up all the prompts for the April Poem-A-Day Challenge finish up any I missed. (How’d it go? Done and done :))

Sincerely,

Rhonda

Goals, Hollow, NaNoWriMo

Camp NaNoWriMo

May 15, 2012 R. Parrish 16 Comments

I may be crazy. Ah hell, I might as well own it, right? I am crazy.

I just signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo for June. Camp NaNoWriMo is the same as regular NaNoWriMo but it takes place in June or August rather than November.

I signed up because I’ve really been struggling with writing new fiction this year. I’ve created several poems I’m really fond of, but when it comes to fiction I haven’t written anything new all year. I’ve re-written a few stories, and I’m up to my eyeballs with HTRYN revisions on Twixt, but brand new from nothing drafts? Nada. In five months. That’s unacceptable.

So, that’s where Camp NaNoWriMo comes in.

I have a story I’m meant to be working on with Danica. It’s called Hollow Children and the idea is that I’m going to write it and then she will illustrate it. I’ve decided to make it my Camp NaNo project. Perhaps the daily word counts, accountability and a NaNo-light atmosphere will help me get it done. It will then sit for a few months until I find time to revise it, but it will be written and maybe that will break through this wall in my brain that is keeping me from getting any new fiction written.

Or, maybe I’m just crazy.

Goals, Guest Blogger, NaNoWriMo, NovPad, Personal, Pictures, Shadows

Paint and Music and Love. Oh my!

October 31, 2011 R. Parrish Leave a comment

Today is my anniversary. Another year spent married to this guy. This is Jo. Jo rocks. We’ve been together for just over ten years now, married for seven of them. I love him more today than I did a decade ago and if I were to imagine my life without him it would be a dismal thing indeed.

He’s got his game face on in this picture — we were in the lab and he was pouring things into test tubes for me to photograph. He’s cool like that.

*Insert some sort of clever segue here between anniversaries and music*

Today I’ve got a guest blog over at Beth Cato’s blog. It’s all about music and stories. Check it out 🙂 Once you’ve read my blog post poke around Beth’s site a bit more. I’m the third guest blogger she’s had there recently talking about music. Also, she’s just kinda awesome.

*Insert one more clever segue*

I’m working on a collaborative project with Jennythe_reader. We hooked up via 2xCreative (which I’ve mentioned before here). We’re actually doing a couple projects together. For the first, I sent her a poem I’d written and she is writing it out all pretty-like and then embellishing the paper. I don’t think my description does it justice, but you can hear her talk about it a little bit here. Anyway, I kind of wanted to do something more. Partly because my time investment was pretty small this month (I already had the poem written and only had to send it to her) and also partly because I wanted to do something different. Whenever I work on a collaborative project I provide words in some form or another. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, but Jenny, well, Jenny is a fabric artist. It just so happens that I paint fabric. How could we not do something that combined those talents?

I dug out my fabric painting stuff from where it was tucked into a corner of the basement and painted three pieces. I will be popping these into the mail to Jenny this week and I’ll keep you updated about what she creates with them. I can’t wait to see!

In other, writing-related news, though I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year, I am doing the November Poem-a-Day challenge. My theme is going to be ‘Classic Horror’ with a focus (I hope) on ghosts.

I’ve also begun transcribing and revising Shadows. Right now I’m only working on the revision part (the first couple chapters were already transcribed), and I’m 4,785 words in. I’d love to use a word count meter of some sort here, but that’s tricky when you don’t know how many words you’re going to end up with LOL I think my last estimate was about 70k but at this point, it’s all a big question mark.

Finally, did I mention that it’s my anniversary? Happy Halloween everyone and Jo, I love you.

Rhonda Parrish