Ah sporadic-ness, how I love thee..

It's weird the things that can trigger the Muse. The past months have been so hectic I couldn't think. Between Alaskan cruises and remodels, well... what's a writer to do?

However, school has started again and I'm happily in the thick of it. This year I am taking a more active role, which includes being more involved with what we're reading. How does this relate to writing you may ask.. If you have to ask, we really need to sit down and have a talk. Anywho.. with the reading, it makes me aware of dialog and writing, especially when reading aloud. Combine that with the new teacher who is teaching creative writing and well... there ya' go.

So today I wrote. Dialog, cleaning up scenes, finishing up some scenes. For several hours I wrote. It felt wonderful! Now if I could only have a full sized kitchen to cook in, I might just make it.

And into June..

Well... as the song says... schools out for summer. The last week or so has seen some sort of progress on the WIP. Mostly I found a captive fan willing to listen to the rough draft being read. I've found that I find more of my grammatical and typing errors when I read out loud.

I have actually made progress and tightened up a few things... caught timing errors for one and am feeling a bit more optimistic about making progress. Maybe I'll even get time this summer to get further. One can always hope.

Holy cow.. TWO?

Wow, two posts in one month... I think it's a record of late. Anywho... I've been writing! Yay me. I've been wedging it n between everything else n my world. The writing feels wonderful and I'm making progress once more on Restart. All is joy, right?

Not exactly. I've realized that my preferred way of proofing my work is to read it aloud to someone. Someone that can interact... verbally... in a way I can understand. All of that rules out the cats. Now I've managed to corner my friend once.. which helped (Thank you Kimmy!!) but other than that... nada. It's the Stanley Cup Playoffs so hubby is not an option. The child is... well... the child. While they support me, they really would rather play the 3DS. Okay, well... one of those I understand.

So where do I find people to read to? Oh I thought of maybe the library but.. meh. I... I don't have anyone else. Summer is coming and I know that for half of it I'm busy busy... but.. eventually things will slow down again (I hope!) and I'll be right back to looking for someone to read to.

Well who knows... maybe something will come up. In the meantime, I'll be happy with the feeling of progress.

More writing.. wow.

Huh, who'dda thought.. Still working on the character re-write. It's been hit or miss and there is much not written, but it's still writing.

The other day I had a brain storm of ideas for Restart (WIP)... on my way to work. Uhg! Couldn't do a damn thing about it, except hope that the ideas stuck around long enough for me to get back home and jot them. No.. jotting them at work isn't an option., nor is jotting whilst driving. Thankfully they did stick around... well mostly.

Why is it that when you need to be left alone to write the entire world suddenly seems hell-bent on bugging you? I was humming along.. words flowing, dialog snappy and... BAM! Phone rings. So  stop the stream of ideas long enough to answer it. It was the child seeking information. I gave the information and make it go away. Now I'm on a time limit. Damn. Dive back into the dialog and right at a critical spot that needed a carefully worded reply when... you guessed it... the damn phone. (No idea why I don't turn the bloody thing off.)

This time it was hubby... seeking information. I give him information and try tactfully to extract myself from the conversation. He loves me and respects my writing, so all I had to do was hint and he went away. Yay. Back into the dialog, snappy reply written when.. phone rings again. Are ya' kidding me?! WTF? I look... son-of-a... its hubby again. I answer, answer the question and chase him off. Type maybe a whole 'nother sentence when the [insert suitably vile expletive] phone rings again!!! This time I'm not nice when I answer and snarl. Poor hubby... he apologizes profoundly and begs... BEGS me to set up the DVR for hockey. I snarl some more and do it. That done I glance at the clock and ... oh yeah folks... time to go. Note to self... do not let certain characters (namely one particular Bedlam) drive in the afternoon.

So... there everything sits. I did get a bit more done, but the brain storm I'd had that morning vanished. Ah well..

And again with the long gap...

This is getting to be a bad habit of mine. However, the flip side is that I have been writing. Not necessarily on Restart... but who knows..  I've also been overseeing the remodel. I feel like we're getting a castle!! It's really neat.

So, writing.. yeah. Sometimes you find you've created a character into a corner and are stuck. Last week I realized I had done just that. Not a good thing. I've done it before and really for me there is just one solution.................. REVAMP! Not reboot... revamp. Bit different.. at least to my perception. I've fund that the best way to do something like this is a cataclysmic event, one that is so immense that it's life altering, literally.

With this particular character it meant her mind was well... decimated. It involved some family betrayal and some other messed up stuff... but the deed is done now and so I'm slowly putting the poor thing back together. Thus... writing. I'm finding though that it's not just writing. To be able to effectively remake a character I have to sort of feel what they are feeling. Yeahhhh.... exactly. So it's been an umm... interesting week or so. Spent a couple days just completely out of it and the rest of the time confused..lol.

The onset I didn't write however. I'm blessed to have a husband who is as creative as I am. To be fair here... he started it!! I'd mentioned not being happy with the character being kind of locked into one situation and so he looked at me and said the words I love to hear... "What if...?" Whooo baby and we were off to the races! So the beginning of this whole thing wasn't and probably won't be written... but I'm very okay with that. Maybe down the road I'll take this tale and included it in something.

Totally Sporadic!

Possibly spastic too. Yeah yeah.. haven't posted in a while... blah blah blah. Frankly nothing has been exciting and no progress made on the book. However! Starting tomorrow it's the annual Read an E-book Week. With that in mind, I'm offering Soul of Evil for a measly 1.49!

Yes.. shameless promotion. I do that now and again.

Although... now that I'm making words happen, it dawns on me that I haven't been completely void of writing. My job (yeah, I have one of those.. amazing huh?) has made me focus on writing. See, the kids I work with are reading Hunger Games. I'm the one who went and found the study questions for the book, so it stands to reason I set the rules for the answers on the questions, right? Right! Now, in the past, with other books, there have been a lot of questions for each chapter, so the kids have gotten lazy and in the habit of one word answers that are straight out of the book.

That's not teaching them anything... it's certainly not teaching them to think about what they are reading. So, in an effort to encourage these things, my rule is simple... each question MUST be answered with no less than two complete sentences.  When you've only got say five questions at most.. come one... that's easy.  To listen to the kids though you'd think I'd asked for the great American novel from them!

Okay.. it's a new thing (though it shouldn't be!), I'll give some wiggle room. For the first nine chapters.. that's 1/3 of the book... I'd give half credit for one sentence answers, because hey I got one sentence. Well... that stopped this past week.  Combine that with the first chapter to have one question... Yeahhh... so the one question... That I expect a minimum of 7 sentences! Oh the horror.. the carnage! LOL.. No I'm not their favorite person right now... but I... I'm okay with that... because they are actually writing! Not all of them.. and not always the best... but they are writing!

Not mine but...

I don't usually bather on about my kiddo. I'm funny that way. However, the kiddo writes... and seeing as how I'm not getting bupkiss done as far as writing, I'm going to share theirs.

A bit of background. This was written as an assignment today. The class is Junior English 2. They've been focusing on poetry and sonnets and the like. The following is what my child turned in today. Enjoy... comments appreciated.

Beautiful Harm
My Heart in your hands comely tangled,
I'm trapped there in your calloused scornful grasp,
Held captive by those hands I am mangled,
They hold tightly on my vein like a clasp.

I can't escape you or your demanding,
I scream aloud my cries fall on deaf ears,
My will is yours there is no expanding,
You only let go to grab some more beers.

As you grab I proceed to run away,
My heart is jumping from those damn drunken hands,
Now I have escaped I know what to say,
But I go back like all those rubber bands.

I know no one else will love me,
You are my best chance at love with no fee.