A Hodgepodge of Stuff

I'm feeling slightly better today - better enough to be miserable that I still can't walk.

On Wednesday night I had a few friends over to celebrate another friend's birthday. It was really a fun night. We ate way too much, watched very stupid movies (Can something titled Zombie Strippers possibly have any redeeming qualities?), and played Fact or Crap. That is one of the most fun games I've ever played. Great for both kids (mine love it) and adults.

Everything was great until after when we girls decided to prove that no matter the age, females are more flexible than males by doing splits. Now with me, actually doing the split isn't the problem. That I can do easily. I just have trouble getting up since with only one hand I can't get the leverage to just stand. I have to bring my front leg around and and get to my knees before standing. As I was bringing my leg around, I heard a very loud pop and my knee hurt!

Now, for the past two days I haven't been able to bend it. I'm really stuck since I walk everywhere and walking isn't much of an option at the moment. But my roomies are being great. Doing everything so I can just sit or lie with my leg elevated. I should be grateful. Instead I'm suffering severe cabin fever. I can't even get to the library to exchange books *cries*

Since being stuck in my apartment, I have been watching a lot of movies. Last night I watched a really cute, heartbreaking movie called Letters to God about an 8 year old boy dying of cancer and how his struggle and faith inspired an entire town. I was crying at the end. Even if you don't believe in God, you might enjoy it. Here's a preview for the movie:



Enjoy! I'm off to do homework.

No Post

I'm in a lot of pain today and drugged to the gills with pain killers. Will post tomorrow when my mind returns.

Classes Have Begun

Writing has not happened much this week so far. I have been so busy with my own schooling and helping my friend get situated in his classes (and finish sorting out the glitches in his financial aid) that I have only written for about 10 minutes each day.

But I can't regret the lack of writing. At this point in my life, as important as writing is to me, my schooling is more so. I want to get my degree more than anything else. In fact one could almost say I am compulsive about my schoolwork. Yesterday was the first official day of classes, and I don't have class again until Monday, but I had to get all my homework done as soon as I got home. Mainly, because I know myself. If I don't do it immediately, I won't do it until the last moment - if at all. And I not only want to do it, but do it well.

On the plus side, all of my classes seem very interesting. Not just from class today, but from the books (yes, I read all my text books and took notes from the readings before classes ever started). I am taking and anatomy and physiology class which I think is going to be the hardest one. I have one other biology class called Biology in the 21st Century, Cultural Geography and History of the LGBT Community. I also got a very pleasant surprise yesterday when I ran into some friends on campus and was able to arrange a carpool with them so I don't have to worry about the new bus schedule or bus money (which I don't have).

The other great thing is that most of my classmates in my A&P class are older women (35 and up). Classes are so much better when the students are older. More actual learning goes on and a lot less goofing off. People are more willing to form study groups rather than social groups. I think it's for a combination of reasons. 1) Because the older student is more likely to be spending their own hard earned money to pay for the classes and they don't want to waste it. 2) They are usually in school for a specific reason and actually want to be there. It makes a difference to the whole learning atmosphere to have a class of older people. One of my previous professors put it this way, "I'd rather have a class of 5 middle aged women to teach than 100 kids because with the older women, I know they'll actually remember most of what I teach them."

Once I get more settled into my classes and into a routine there, I'm going to work hard on getting my writing time back up to par.

Sprint or Marathon?

A fellow blogger and friend, Janet, posted today about her goal to spend 45 minutes every morning for the next 30 days writing before logging onto the internet. No email. No facebook. No nothing. Yikes! I can't imagine it. I am a serious email junkie. Not that I get much that isn't spam, but still. I love seeing the flashing envelope that tells me I have mail waiting for me. And don't even get me started on facebook! After I unfriended my parents, I actually started using it.

Yes I am aware of exactly how awful that sounds, but it's true. Mainly because the majority of what I post has to do with my writing and schoolwork. My writing they don't believe in because of what they saw happen with my cousin (whose name I'm not going to mention). Anyway, my cousin published her first book in 1995. It sold pretty well and was nominated for the Arthur C Clarke award. She knew she had many other stories inside her waiting to be told, so she quit her job and focused on writing full time. When her next book came out in 1996, it didn't do quite so well. Then her next book wasnt published until 1999. In the meanwhile, she was struggling, actually drowning, financially and couldn't find another job.

As my mother put it when I told her about my writing, "I don't want you to end up like [my cousin], 50 and nanny to someone else's brats because you thought the crap you came up with would actually sell."

Wonderfully supportive, wouldn't you say? After all, there is no chance I could possibly be realistic and know I'm not going to be raking it in like Rowling or Meyers. (Of course having been jobless and homeless, I also know how to survive on very little money, unlike the rest of my family.)

So while my parents were my facebook friends, I never felt like I could post a word about my writing. Now I feel free to do so.

And I have gotten way off topic :)

I freeze at the thought of sitting still for an entire 45 minutes and doing nothing but writing. I sit down at the computer and it's like one big (excuse the expression) brain fart. I couldn't even remember how to type my name. But short little writing spurts (especially if I am racing against someone else to see who accumulates the most words in a given time frame) work really well for me. I can type about 500-600 words in a 15 minute time period. It doesn't seem like a ton by itself, but multiply that by 4 separate 15 minute periods and suddenly I have 2000-2400 words. That's not a bad go for a day.

One of the reasons these short little writing spurts works so well for me is that the excuses are gone. Writing for an hour? My brain has a million and one excuses, I mean reasons why I can't sit for an entire hour - school, kids, job hunting, cleaning, food, etc. But 15 minutes? I can squeeze 15 minutes in anywhere. It's not long enough to interfere with everything else going on in life, yet the word count still grows steadily.

So that's my goal for the next 30 days - find at least 3 times a day where I can write for 15 minutes. That does not include school writing.

Are you a sprinter like me?

Or are you more a marathoner like Janet?

My original post today (until I read Janet's) was going to be a rant about the abysmal state of our school system and how they are ruining our children, but I will save that for a day when I have nothing writing-wise to post.

Waiting For The Right One

Originally I wasn't going to post until Tuesday since I missed Thursday due to LIFE, but I had some free time (amazing how that happens when you don't sleep at night) and an idea for a post, so here goes.

I don't know if this happens to other writers (I assume it does and that I'm not just some freak :) ), but I have 3 novels with the entire first, second and third drafts done and am working on the next revisions. BUT I don't plan an subbing them to agents even if I get them to the point where I think of them as done.

It's not that I think they aren't good or that the concept of the story is completely unoriginal. I just have this gut instinct that they aren't going to sell - or at least not right now. Do I have anything to back up that feeling? No I don't, but it's enough to make me not want to query them to agents. I also have the series I started that has a ghost as the MC of which I am in the midst of the first draft. That one I think might sell. However tonight as I was looking through the coursework for my online classes, an idea came to me. It took me about 15 minutes to write up the outline (and I do mean outline - 3-10 bullet points per chapter) of the 26 chapter story. And as I was writing it, I just knew that if I can write it well and do justice to the concept, this one will sell. This will be the novel I query first, and I already know which agents I want to query with it.

Until tonight, I thought maybe something was wrong with me that I didn't want to query any of the novels I've already written. I worried that maybe I wasn't really that serious about getting published. Which is silly since aside from my children and school, writing and getting published is the one thing I am most serious about. So I was thrilled when I realized I finally have a novel I am going to write and know I will submit to agents.

But what makes one idea click when others don't? I love all my story ideas. All the ones that I only have outlines of, and the ones I've actually written one or more drafts of. So why this one? If anything, compared to my other ones, it's a bit more on the ordinary side, similiar (though different) to what's already out there. So why does this one make my insides sit up and go, "This is it. This is the one that is going to actually get seen."

Does this mean I'm going to drop my work on the others? Yes, at least temporarily while I work on this one (working title What You Make It), but I'm not giving them up completely. I do believe that eventually I will submit those to an agent and try to get them published. They just won't be my first, or maybe even my second or third, but someday they will be brought out into the light.

So for the moment, I am going to take down the word count bars for my other novels and put up one for What You Make It and leave that as my only one while I work on it. And let me know, please, whether or not I'm the only one this happens to, or do some of you have works that you don't plan on querying any time soon?

Sorry

Sorry I didn't post on Thursday. It's been a fairly hectic week with school starting, my son's birthday today, my temporary roommate, reading, writing, job hunting and trying to sort through financial aid messes with my friend (it's his first time dealing with financial aid). I'll do an extra long post on Tuesday to make up for it.

Impossible Situations

I’ve had a really difficult time recently sticking to a writing schedule. Part of that is due to job hunting. To job hunt effectively, a person really has to spend time at it. Part of it is due to school. Being the nerd I proudly admit to being, I insist on reading through all my textbooks, taking notes on them and writing up vocabulary lists from each chapter before classes ever start, and that takes up a lot of time as well. Part of it is that I have had houseguests off and on (mostly on) since the beginning of September. I write best in silence. I despise noise, and houseguests are rarely quiet (to my needs) even when they try their best to be quiet. They watch movies or listen to music (something I almost never do) or just move around. Normal activities, but when a person is used to living alone and spending most of their time in complete silence, it’s noisy.

But I can’t really get rid of the houseguests, even though I desperately want privacy so I can write. My original guests were a friend, his cousin and his cousin’s girlfriend. They were through out of their aunt’s house with no notice and no where to stay. So they stayed and got jobs (and drove me out of my mind J ). My friend left at the beginning of November, and the other two went back home to California the first week of December. For a month I had my apartment back to myself and writing happened. I revised a couple of more chapters on my YA #1and wrote outlines for my YA #3 and it’s sequels (yes, that one is meant to be part of a series). Then last week I get a call from another friend. His buddy has been thrown out of his house and my friend’s family won’t let the boy stay there. It’s below freezing out, the weatherman is calling for snow, and the boy is only 16. I truly don’t think that anyone with a conscience could refuse to help. So long story made short, I once again have a houseguest.

So writing has pretty much come to a standstill again. School stuff is completely finished, I am still job hunting, but I am itching to write. Literally. It’s like this scratching inside my brain of ideas trying to get out and into the computer. But I just can’t do it. Writing does not happen for me with people around.

To make matters worse, as soon as this boy is gone (he leaves on the 28^th to another place) the girl who went home to CA is coming back. Her mother refuses to allow her to stay there since she is pregnant. She has nowhere to stay here in Maryland, so it looks like I’ll only have a week between my two houseguests. I’m going to have to write nonstop that entire week to get any significant work done next month. Either that or learn how to deal with noise, but seeing as I’ve been this way since I was young, I don’t see it changing any time soon.

Are there any situations in which you find it impossible to write, no matter how many ideas are clamoring in your brain?

My Net Isn't Working Right

Originally I was not going to post again until Tuesday, but I have to do this post now because of what is in the first half of the post.

I owe many bloggers an apology. I have read quite a few blog posts in the past day that I wanted to comment on, but my net is acting very strangely and will not let me do it. So I wanted to apologize for not commenting and post the comments for two of those blogs here.

Both Karyn and Janet blogged about picking a one-word mantra to represent what you want your life to be in the new year (instead of resolutions which I, personally, suck at keeping in any way, shape or form). It really didn’t take me very long at all to know what mine is.

COMPLETION

I want this to be the year where I complete so many things that are hanging over my head. I want to complete at least one of my manuscripts to where I believe it’s submission ready. I want to complete my A.A. degree so I can move on to the next level of my education. I want to complete the manuscript rough draft that I am working on right now. I also want to complete the 100+ book challenge for 2011 where I promised to read 450 books this year.

Today I made a good start on the Completion mantra. Back in November I had helped a neighborhood boy apply to the local Community College where I am a student. He had believed he couldn’t go because of monetary reasons. We got together one night and I walked him through both the school and financial aid applications. Today (Friday) we went up to the school and got him registered for all his classes!

A couple of other Completions will be happening in three months when two of my previous roommates take their GED test. When they were in trouble and moved in with me, I told them that the requirement for moving in was that they get their GED. They have been studying like crazy and asking me for help when they need it, and even though they are no longer living with me, they are signed up to take the test.
Now if only I could get back in the habit of writing daily, I could cross a few more Completions from my list.

As for the second half, couple of posts back, I mentioned I had entered the 500 word contest over at The Sharp Angle. This is the entry I submitted from my new, unfinished manuscript.

Being a ghost sucks. And I do mean it seriously sucks.

I always thought it would be kinda cool to be a ghost and haunt a place or maybe someone I hated like those stuck up B’s at school who refused to speak to “someone like me.” After all, ghosts are supposed to be dead folks that carry a grudge so strong or have unfinished business and so they can’t move on to the afterlife. The world couldn’t be more wrong!

I stood outside Heaven’s gates (which I would love to describe for you because they were so gorgeous, but it seems that’s against the rules and every time I write something about them it gets deleted) for hours waiting for my turn to approach. Don’t know why the line was so long. Maybe a lot of extra people died that day. All I know is when I finally got to the front of the line (and man did my feet hurt by then) Saint Peter looked at me, then down at his book, and told me I wasn‘t allowed in.

“You still have things to accomplish, Anastasia Walker, before you are allowed to enter Our Father’s kingdom. You must atone for ending your life too soon.”

See, here’s the thing: I killed myself. (Stupid. I know. But it kinda seemed like the right thing to do at the time.) Now I was never a churchgoer in my life, but I’ve heard repeatedly from books and movies and friends who did go to church that suicide is the Unforgivable Sin and earns you a one way ticket to Hell. Heck, all a body’s got to do is watch the movie Constantine (and who wouldn’t with that hot, to-die-for Keanu Reeves in it) to know that.

Turns out that’s not entirely accurate. Like with most things, that rule has a loophole and Saint Peter gave me the opportunity to take it and get a second shot at entering those gates. He sent me to this little room off to the side. It looked kinda like a cross between a hospital waiting room and a classroom. The walls were a nasty, institutional grayish white. Chairs lined the walls, but not the cushy chairs of a waiting room. Nope. They were those ugly plastic things that are so hard your butt feels like you’re sitting on a brick. Only no desks attached to them, just a little end table between each chair with magazines and pamphlets sitting on them. Just like a waiting room. No Rolling Stone or Sports Illustrated though. Not even a Redbook or Better Homes & Garden. All these were about the joys awaiting you once you finally gained permission to enter those pearly gates (I guess I can call them pearly without getting into trouble). And at one end of the room stood one of those, I think they’re called lecterns. I’m not entirely sure on that, but it was one of those wooden stands people put their notes on when they have to give a speech or a lecture.

Let me know what you think please.

CATCH-22's

There are two aspects of writing YA (young adult) books that I struggle with, and I think they kind of go hand in hand - cursing and sex. I'm never sure how much, if any, to add.

CURSING

Teens curse. Heck, even my 8 year old daughter sometimes lets out a "damn" or "ass." She gets in trouble for it, but she still does it. And the older kids get, the more they curse and the more inventive they get with it. There are also adult characters in YA (parents, teachers, bad guys, etc.) and adults are also known to curse. So if I want to write a realistic novel with realistic characters, do I have to put cursing in?

Some writers I know say to use substitute words, and if you have a character that is deeply religious or just chooses not to curse (like Zoey in the House of Night series) that works. But to have ordinary teens saying rats and golly just seems ridiculous to me. I'm not saying that the characters should cuss up a storm. I think a lot of it depends upon the age range of the readers a writer is aiming for. A book for tweens (10-13 years old) should have extremely sparse cursing in my opinion and no really bad words. For the 14-18 year old range, I think it should be realistic. Curses should be sprinkled in where they are appropriate. Or it can be handled the way J.K. Rowling did it in the Harry Potter series. She often wrote that Ron "said a word that would have made Mrs. Weasly blush and start yelling." (Not sure if that is an exact quote but words to that effect.)

Since the books I write are aimed for the 13-18 years old range, I've come to believe that having some cursing in my books is acceptable. Though it was a difficult decision to make. Mainly because I feel that by putting it in there I am subtly condoning it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think teens should curse.

And there I am caught in the Catch-22 again. Argh!!

SEX

I have the same problem with sex in my books. In my YA #1, the female main character is attacked by a pedophile and is saved by the male main character. Some of the sexual contact must be shown in a situation like that, but how much is too much? In my YA #3 that I am writing the rough draft of right now, the main character (a ghost) inhabits the body of a 15 year old boy who is experimenting with sex to find out if he really is gay or not. How much of his experimenting do I show? How much is it going to offend the general readership to have gay sex in the book? And once again, does putting sex in the book show a tacit approval of teens having sexual relationships?

So many questions I don't have the answer to. Every expert I've heard from says to do what feels right in these situations. But I'm one of those people capable of seeing, understanding, and to a point agreeing with all sides of an issue. I can see the plus side of putting sex in and I can see the down side.

I is all confuzzled on this topic.

Great Contest!

Over at the The Sharp Angle, they are running a great contest that I entered. Submit the first 500 words of your manuscript and win some prizes if yours is chosen. Click on the blog title to follow the link to the contest.

The Joy of Reading

One thing almost all writers love to do is read. I am not an exception to that. So with that in mind, I have decided to sign up and do the 100+ Book Challenge for 2011. I do have to make it a bit more challenging though since reading a book a day (and by book I mean at least 300 pages or more) is my norm. School does cut into that somewhat, but I have to read books for class too and those count toward the challenge as well. Add in the books my children and I read together or that I pre-read to make sure they are appropriate for my children to read, and I am going to set my goal at 450 books for 2011.

Since I tend to read more when I am stuck in bed sick, I have gotten a good jump on reading during the first 3 days of the year (I did nothing but sleep and read all three days). Here is the list of what I read in the past 3 days:

1. High Noon by Nora Roberts
2. The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
3. Marked by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
4. Betrayed by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
5. Chosen by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
6. Untamed by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
7. Hunted by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
8. Tempted by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
9. Burned by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Numbers 3-9 are the House of Night series that a friend gave me for Christmas. Isn't it great to have friends who know and love you?

#10 on the list that I should be done with tomorrow is Dark Stranger by Susan Sizemore.

Greetings and Salutations!

Blogging is obviously (as everyone connected to the writing industry repeatedly tells us) a necessity for an up and coming author - as a networking tool if nothing else. I disagree. For me blogging is not about trying to share my writing wisdom with other struggling writers (who says I have any anyways?) or lists of do's and don't's that we hear everywhere in the writing community. Fact is everyone rehashing the same old crap. And if you didn't learn it the first 5 million times you read it, give up.

Yes, I am aware that I sound a bit bitter. But honestly, what are people doing? And why do so fricking many insist on doing the same exact thing?

This blog will have none of that. No little "lessons." No guidelines to follow. No supposed expertize flowing from my fingers onto the screen. 'Cause I refuse to do things I despise and I despise most writing blogs. After following over 200 of them for close to 2 years under a different screen name, I have vowed never to have a blog like that.

Mainly I want this space to vent when my stupid characters get it into their heads that they are writing the story. To cry when I receive the expected rejections. To scream and shout for joy on that distant day when I finally receive an acceptance. To bang my head against a virtual wall when the words just won't come. To give myself something to write on those days I just want to toss all my work into the nearest toilet (and yes, by that I mean the laptop since I do not write longhand).

Ideally I will be posting every Tuesday, but as I am trying to get this up and running, it may take me a bit to really stick to a schedule and find a day that regularly works well.

A Little Bit About Me

Writing has been my passion for as long as I can remember. If I didn't like what was happening in the book I was reading, I would just rewrite the book. Sometimes even on the pages of the book - much to the horror of my parents (both bibliophiles like myself). As I grew older, I graduated to rewriting the scripts of movies I saw to either make the movie better (at least in the eyes of my friends and myself) or to write in my friends and me as the romantic interests of our favorite actors. At the time I didn't realize that what I was doing actually had a name - fan fiction. I just knew that I wanted life and all things in it to fit what went on in my imagination.

From there I graduated to sappy, teenage, romantic and/or depressing poetry. Thank God that phase didn't last too long. Not only did my poetry suck big time, but writing it just made me more depressed than I already was as a teen.

Nowadays I stick with Young Adult novels, usually with some paranormal aspect. And let me tell you, I enjoy it so much more.

My writing goal for 2011 is to have one of my novels ready for submission to an agent and/or publisher. Most likely it will be one of the two novels that I am working on revising right now. But who knows? I just started rough draft for a new novel on New Year's. If this one flows smoothly and quickly, it could be my first submission. Although I'd rather it not be. This new one is part of a 9 book series and I don't want my first submission to be a series that I might get stuck with long after it should be done.

But that's a worry for another day.