Back from the Brink

Oh, boy, folks, have I had a crazy few weeks. Grab a cuppa coffee/tea/wine/beverage of your choice and let me tell you all about it.

So I needed a mini break of blogging because I hadn't quite figured out how to manage my writing, my "new" job, family, life, and blogging all at the same time. I think I've figured it out now, so we're gonna try a trial of me blogging on Tuesdays and Saturdays for a while, and see how it works. Please bear with me as I reintegrate myself into the blogosphere.

This is your brain on editing.
Any questions?

Then there was the writing. In late October not only was I trying to manage some pretty intense revision on my novel (currently listed on my WIPs page as FIGHTING FATE, though I plan to change the title to IN FLAMES). I wanted to get a full round of revision finished before NaNoWriMo started, while also juggling my NaNo prep. That took a LOT out of me, and I edited until my brains turned into liquid goo. Seriously. It was messy.

My own personal NaNo shield

On November first, having finished that round of editing, I was happy to accept my NaNo fate. I greeted it with a warm, strong handshake. And on the fateful afternoon of November 1st, I had an extra meeting with my boss, wherein he asked me to work overtime in preparation for our display at an upcoming conference (I work for a small, specialty academic publisher). And in my inner ear, I heard my NaNo plans go *squish*. My boss and I negotiated trading the days in early November for days around Thanksgiving, so not all was lost, but it put some stress on my NaNo plans nonetheless.

As of November 12th, one-third of the way through the month, I had only written about 14K over the course of 4 authentic writing days. Ouch.

On the morning on November 13th, as I'm leaving my house to pick up a friend, I grab my phone to let her know I'm coming, and see that I have a missed text message from my boss--who, I might add, never sends me text messages. It said, more or less, that he was in the hospital, post-surgery after having had a heart attack. Everything okay. Call to talk about conference prep. SERIOUSLY. My boss is in the intensive care unit on a Sunday morning and wants to talk about conference prep. Now, granted, the conference started on the 17th. My boss isn't really all that Type-A, but we did still have a lot of work to do, and that essentially took the editorial side of our house from 3 to 2 employees doing the bulk of the work (we have a few work-study students, but regular employees, we are three). So now add more overtime work to my schedule over the next three days, making the first day of the conference (Nov 17th) day 5 for writing. Not a good sign.

See how the Jell-O powder gets all goopy with a little water?

Not to mention that on the 17th and the 18th I was about as worthless a writer as an uncooked box of Jell-O, from working 10hour days three days in a row, and the emotional turmoil of talking to my boss on the phone while he was doped on morphine and falling asleep. Yup, powdery Jell-O.

Somehow, though, I managed to pull a few days writing between 5-6K. Don't ask me how. Perhaps some superhuman feats of strength that even kryptonite couldn't squelch. Who knows? But I have to attribute at least a little of my success to Hart Johnson and her stupendous idea for hour-long sprint-writing sessions. I think those were ultimately my saving grace. Coordinated over Facebook, I would periodically join Hart, among others, on these sprints, and both the time and the community support helped a ton.

And, imagine, through all of that, I actually won!

Granted, according to my word verification, I only have 50,002 words, but I don't care! I'm 2 words over what they need (although, according to my Scrivener file, I have 50,019), and that's what matters.

Anyway, now it's December. A little over two weeks until the holiday break comes, which will entail lots of time with family, friends, and fruitcake. I'm already celebrating by eating too many sweets and listening to Christmas music while I cook and bake. And, dangit all, I am MAKING these cookies if it kills me. I just have to find some sweet rice flour first...

Be seeing you around the blogosphere!

Writers' Platform-Building Campaign

For those of you who don't know, Rachael Harrie is running the third Writers' Platform-Building Campaign (formerly know as the Crusade). The purpose of the Campaign is to provide a way to link those of us in the writing community together with the aim of helping to build our online platforms. You can visit her Campaign information (also here) to find out more details and sign up.

Yup, I joined. I hope it was the right decision, since I want to be able to dedicate enough time to it. This will be my first time, so I hope I can make a good impression on all my new campaign-cohorts. After a month off from writing and working, I'm back to both, and having trouble juggling in the blogging as well. But I'm here to try. Feel free to nudge me :)

Welcome to all in my Campaign groups. I'll be by soon to introduce myself.

Getting Back in the Swing

Boy, oh boy, does taking a month off put a dent in ones momentum. Getting it back has been quite a process, and, well, it's not back yet. This counts for writing, editing, and blogging.

So I'm working on weekly goals. One of my crit partners and I are trading weekly goals and trying to motivate the other to stick to them. I've gotten through some of them, although my reading goals are falling behind—which is bad, since they're ARCs and I have deadlines to meet.

This may be the most versatile picture
I've ever taken :)

I don't know how people with real 40hr/wk jobs juggle writing, editing, blogging, reading, family, friends, life, and sanity. I just don't. I'm struggling right now because my job upped my hours to 25 per week. That's nothing, right? And yet I can't seem to get in the hours they want while also getting the writing-job requirements fulfilled at the same time.

It's probably because I've just started. This is week two. Add to this my month hiatus from everything.

But... but... shiny new writing office should make everything better, right?

*sigh*

Any suggestions on how to get back in the writing groove? Other than just to do it? Because, really, I'm trying. It's just so SLOW!

Back to the Blogo-World

Dearest Bloggy Buddies,
Thank you for your patience on my hiatus. It has been a stressful month of packing, moving, homelessness, moving, and unpacking again. But, at the end of the day, we're in our new house, and I have my own shiny new writing office!

Also, my cats are a lot happier now that we're not trying to live in a Motel 6.

You'll be seeing more of me, both here and around the blogosphere. It may take a couple of weeks, but I'll make the rounds. I have a new writing/working/blogging schedule that should work out pretty well.

Stop by on Friday as I get back into full swing.

Any news from the last month that I've missed? Fill me in!

Blogging and Internet Privacy

Image courtesy of SafetyWeb.com

In the age when facial recognition is incorporated into your driver's license picture and Facebook auto-tags you and your friends when you upload photos (though not always correctly), people worry about privacy on the net. The Man is spying on us all, looking for keywords in posts like terrorism and bomb and other threatening vocabulary

(Hello, Mr/Ms Fed Agent. Glad you came to read my blog!).

And yet we writers blog on a (semi-)regular basis. Not only that, but we put ourselves out there in a rather public sphere, some people even linking their blog of Facebook, Twitter, other co-authored blogs, some even going so far as to list their home address and phone number in case an agent would like to contact them. We create ourselves as public figures and hope we're not famous enough to attract real-life stalkers while also toning down the rants to avoid any government's spy radar from picking up our signals.

(Are you still with me, Mr/Ms Fed Agent? Or is this just chatter? Did you catch my use of the word "stalker"?)

What I find intriguing in all this are the people who have blogs, blogging profiles, and "aliases", but somehow those profiles are disconnected from the comments they leave on blogs. I personally like to respond to people's comments via email, because it may lead to a more personal discussion, or the person to whom I'm responding might not return to my blog to see my answer. And half the time, I hit reply, type a paragraph and click send before I realize that the response is going to "no-reply@blogger.com".

Image courtesy of Uproxx.com

I'm not sure what about it bothers me, but it seems paradoxical. Perhaps with "bloggers" who don't use blogger, i.e., people who use LiveJournal or WordPress, it makes sense, but still some of these people have Blogger profiles as they may use Google Reader or the Blogger Dashboard to read the latest and greatest. It's two clicks or so to connect an email address to an account. Why not do it?

I can only think of two reasons:

1. The person doesn't know how (in which case, I say, go find a ten year old to show you); or
2. S/he is worried about internet security and his/her email address being too accessible.

Yeah, you know, I kinda get it. I don't necessarily want my personal email available to anyone and everyone on the internet. So what did I do? In this booming technological age, I created another email address. Yes, folks, that makes three for me.

1. A Google email address used exclusively for all things literary. I use it for contests, comments, site registration at places like LinkedIn, Narrative.com, etc. If you know me from my blog, it's probably the only email address of mine you'll ever see (except for Carol).
2. My university email. You don't even need to be a tried and true hacker to figure out the address for this email account, but I'm not flaunting it around the net. I use it for work and some personal email. The end.
3. My Yahoo account. While I'm unsure how one blogger has found this and uses it to email me the periodic announcement from her blog (and she may not even know who she is), it's really my catch-all email address. I use it to register at places that are likely to generate spam.

So given the potential for the separation of the net and the personal, I can't figure out why people don't connect an email address to their comments. We're all already online, and therefore have significantly forfeit a portion of our right to internet privacy. We want people to connect to us, read our blogs, and participate in the conversation, but to do that with such a limited means of connecting, to me, seems like cherry picking.


Am I wrong? Are you one of the people who doesn't have your email connected to your account? Tell me why. I honestly don't get it and would like to know.


Are you concerned about yourself being so public and your right to internet privacy? What do you do to protect yourself?

Changes, Constants, and the Big Announcement

Anyone know what happened to Blogger over the past few days? I suppose that’s what I get for delaying my announcement.

So, as some of your may know, I just finished my time in graduate school. Hurray! I’ve decided to move on to other things—like writing (plus a part-time gig)—to while away the hours. For a while it didn’t look possible, but my husband was offered a pretty nice new job with his shiny new PhD. We’ll be moving in August, though just across town. My life is full of changes right now, though they’re all for the better.

But I’ve got one consistent thing in my life… okay, yeah, I’ve got TONS of them, considering we’re not moving to South Dakota or Peru or something. But, when it comes to the relevance of this blog, I have something that’s strongly consistent.

The blog itself.

May 31st marks my one-year blogiversary!

And you know me. I HAVE to celebrate. What does that mean?

BLOGFEST :)

To celebrate, I’m hosting the What’s the Score Blogfest.

On June 1st, post any number of songs, artists, composers, posers, who/whatever that you might want to include in the soundtrack to your WIP. YOU’RE IN CHARGE! You make the soundtrack the way you want it.

Don’t have a WIP? Is your WIP’s soundtrack personal and not something you want to share? No problem! Take your favorite book, or the book your reading right now, or a book you remember well, and make a soundtrack for it.

Want to enter? The Linky List is at the bottom of the page.

Are you thinking, “Meh. Too much work?” Can I add a little incentive?

No celebration is complete without prizes, right?

Prizes:

• Every person who participates is automatically entered to win either a $20 AMAZON GIFT CARD.
• Every person who participates is automatically entered to win a BOOK OF HIS/HER CHOICE from Amazon.
• Anyone who WANTS to have their name added to win either a CHAPTER CRITIQUE or a QUERY CRITIQUE, just let me know in a comment ON THIS POST.

Odds of winning?

Honestly, I have no idea, and I’m horrible at statistics, so I can’t really answer that.

HOWEVER, would you like a better chance to win?

• +1 participating
• +2 current follower (as of 5/13/11) / +1 new follower
• +1 for Tweeting (max. 3; include @rosieanabelle in your Tweet)
• +1 for Facebook post (please provide a link)
• +3 for adding the graphic to your sidebar (please provide a link)
• +5 for posting about it (please provide a link)

That’s a total maximum of 15 points. Talk about increasing your odds!

Well, I hope the announcement was worth the wait, especially with Blogger being funny. Hope to see you on June 1!

Whew!

This past week has flown by, and unfortunately, I'm just now starting to get my life back together. My husband's parents and my mother stayed with us for several days, and we don't exactly have a large house. Add to that graduation festivities (for my hubs, not me), a new job offer, and then lots of Irish jigs that spontaneously came out of my feet, and, well, it all equals one tired Rosie.

So, with that in mind, the Big Announcement will occur on Friday. Monday is the Laughter is the Best Medicine Blogfest, hosted by Leigh T. Moore and Lydia Kang. Then Wednesday I will announce all those awesome awards.

In other news, I just saw that Lindsey Leavitt's new book, THE ROYAL TREATMENT, was released over the weekend. It's the sequel to PRINCESS FOR HIRE, which I had the honor to win from her blog last summer. It's a great, totally fun MG story.

The other thing I learned from Lindsey's blog this morning is that a bookfair has been set up by BN. ANYTHING you buy this week from BN, if you use the code #10486058 at ANY Barnes and Noble store or at bn.com, 10% of your purchase will go towards The United Way of Western Alabama for tornado relief. If we raise $2500, that percentage goes up to 15%.

Help spread the word, and go buy a book.

Catch you on Friday for the Big Announcement. :)

Update

I have temporarily extracted myself from cyberspace, and will be AWOL for a few more days, but I wanted to let you all know that I'm still alive and kicking.

1) Got the awesome hair treatment done, and I LOVE it! If you have hair like mine, I highly recommend the Global Keratin treatment (as well as Erin at Rocstar Hair in Chicago).

2) Drove back from Chicago in nasty, horrible snow. I was a little traumatized from the drive, but arrived home safe and in one piece. I have no desire to do any driving for a while, though.

3) My husband, my mother, and I are flying to Phoenix today to visit my in-laws for the holidays. I'm really looking forward to the break and time to eat cookies and work on writing.

4) Future blog posts will include a review of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone (which I started in October and finally finished this week), and a review of Scrivener, which I got to use for NaNo. Preview: I loved both. Stay tuned.

5) Upcoming reading for me includes: No Place for Heroes by Laura Restrepo, Junction 2020 by Carol Riggs, The Hating Game by Talli Roland, and finishing On Writing by Stephen King. I'll post reviews of these, too, as I finish them.

What are you reading right now?

Happy Thursday, folks! :)

Excuses, Excuses

****Warning**** This is not a happy post.  I will not be offended if you stop here.


Before I write anything else, I want to say that today is my friend Jim's birthday.  Jim passed away two years ago from Leukemia just before he turned thirty. If you have a chance, drink a beer for Jim today.


The past few weeks have been particularly difficult for me. 

First, my campus job is the managing editor of a linguistics journal.  I used to love my job when I first got it, and nothing could have been better than the university (read: my boss/adviser) changing it from an hourly position into a GA position so that I didn't have to teach.  Rock!  And I'm still indebted to him for making it possible.  I just don't love the job anymore.

Which meant that, even though I knew the deadline for the journal to go to print would be this coming Friday, I did nothing with it over the summer.  So, September turned into super catch-up month in terms of publication preparation.  That was the first reason for my falling into the bloggy black hole.

Second, the beginning of October is a rough time for me.  Two years ago, my dad died on the first, and then my birthday is shortly afterward.  The year my dad passed away, we actually had to put off the viewing and the funeral so that neither would fall on my birthday.  It made for a rather awkward series of events.  Since then, I haven't really wanted to celebrate my birthday.  It's too clouded by shadowy memories of a false attempt at celebrating that first year, as well as issues with my dad.

I was so wrapped up my work in September that I almost forgot about the anniversary.  Of course, that meant that I had two major things due on that date, one of which I had volunteered for.  Dumb.

It's been a slow recovery for me this year, especially with Facebook and people wishing me a happy birthday when I just want to forget it.  A friend of mine asked why I don't just take my birthday off of there. Honestly, I may have done that last year, but this year I completely forgot.  I should just take it off permanently. The problem is that everyone else can separate the good from the bad—or simply don't know—but I can't.

Anyway, it's been slow, and I've been catching up with one thing at a time.  First I caught up with the journal, then there's the continuous school-work catch-up, then my critique group, and now I'm getting back to blogging.  I'm going to try and be more on top of visiting you all—in cycles, unfortunately—but I think I've dug myself out of wherever I have been for the past few weeks. 

Thanks for your patience, folks.

Let Me Show You

Dearest Blog Followers,

My sincerest apologies for my extended hiatus.  September took my soul and hid it among my piles of unending work.  The first weeks of October took my mind and made brownies for a bake-sale.  I'm still in recovery mode, but I'm back, sort of, and I plan to be a more regular blogger.

Love,
Rosie

Okay, on to the real meat.

Oh, wait, I recently returned to my vegetarian roots (root-vegetables?).  Perhaps I should say, on to the real kale.

How do you know when to Show and when to Tell? 

Okay, and now we all groan together and then get back to work, right?

No, I'm serious.  A few months ago I entered a contest in which everyone who entered their first three chapters automatically got a three-chap critique from an agent.  So, DUH! I entered.  In looking back at my entry, I cringe slightly, as it has gone through numerous revisions since, but I gave her what I had.  And, of course, it is my first novel, which I continue to beat into submission despite its own intentions.  So, let's just say, it's not super.  I'm still learning the craft.  I'm rusty like that drink you make with Scotch... or how you feel after you drink it, anyway.  So, yeah, I hadn't expected to win.  No way.

What I had expected were slightly less-than-generic comments.

When I got them, I wigged out.  Yeah, anger, etc.  You name it, I felt it.  The comments included the old stand-bys of "Show more" and "Remove clichés" and "Cut back on the wordiness", etc.  And that was it.  No specifics.  So, in my wiggy-outtiness, I sent those three chapters and the general comments to a woman in my critique group who, I might add, is awesome in her straight-forwardness and won't beat around the bush.

If nothing else, she said that the clichés weren't my problem.  *whew*

But that brings us back to show v. tell.  She and I began a long discussion about it, when telling is too much, and—here's the kicker—when showing is too much.

I believe in showing.  I do. Here's a great blog post that explains my understanding of it. And, yeah, I probably tell too much in my first three chapters.  I'm considering rewriting them blind and changing the basic premise altogether, anyway.  That aside, here's my question:

Can you show too much?

If you show EVERYTHING, does your reader get overwhelmed?  By showing everything, are we not trying to tell our readers that every minor flip of hair or memory is of the utmost vital information?  Sometimes events and actions occur to develop character, not necessarily to move the plot.  Are these to be given equal weight?

Or am I, in wondering these things, making the age-old mistakes of the green writer?

In the blog post I linked to above, in the first scene example she gives, the last paragraph—the one that gives the punch to the dialogue—is technically showing.  Am I wrong?  Seriously, folks, am I?  You can't show EVERYTHING!  If you did, we'd be reading War and Peace every time we picked up a novel, but even Tolstoy tells us things!

Help me out, folks.  I'm pretty sure I'm missing something here.

The Results are IN!

Happy Monday to my awesome followers!  Thanks to everyone for making this a super successful contest.  I've been excited all weekend to share the results with you.

So, using the number of entries each person received in conjunction with Random.org, the following people are hereby designated the WINNERS of my contest.

Our first prize is for randomly-generated #30 is

for

MICHELLE

Second prize, for number 26, is:

LYNDA

Third was 62, winner of a chapter critique:

RaSHELLE

Fourth, 9, winner of a query critique:

CAROL

And, finally, number 45, who will enjoy some awesome chocolate:

JC MARTIN

Thank you EVERYONE for playing.  If I've listed you here, please email me at rlconnolly01[at]gmail[dot]com with your address (if I'm mailing you something) so I can get your prizes out to you.

Emotions Recap

Thanks to everyone for participating in my forum earlier this week, and my apologies for not getting results up sooner.  The week slipped away from me again.  Pesky days!

The question was: as writers, where do we mine our emotions?  From ourselves? From others?  If from others, why don't we work with our own?

You gave me lots of good responses, a number of which said that emotions came from inside and outside of themselves.  This makes sense, of course.  I think it would be impossible for someone to write completely outside of their own emotional experiences.  Of course, some of the physical experiences are beyond us (as Hart said, she's never randomly found a dead body even though she's writing her cozy), but that doesn't prevent the emotions from being real.  They just come from somewhere else.

One of the things I tend to worry about in my writing is that people will automatically assume it's autobiographical in some form.  (Random connection:  Has anyone read "The Young Painters" by Nicole Krauss in the 20 under 40 issue of The New Yorker?)  So I tend to try pulling from other experiences so that I can be more assured when fighting against those comments. 

Beyond outside criticism, using our own experiences does mean dealing with those feelings and emotions.  As j.leigh pointed out, that can be extremely difficult for us, throwing our real pain into our writing.  If I did more of that myself, I don't think I would ever finish a piece because I would be too angry or crying too much to get the words onto the page!  It doesn't make the emotions we use any less real, but it gives us more of an external position from which to approach them.  And as Amanda said, with time, using our own emotions and experiences can become less frightening.

Finding emotion everywhere is vital, since we've only lived in our small worlds.  But we shouldn't be afraid of using our own.

Any other thoughts?  Did I miss anything?

Where Do Your Emotions Come From?

Okay, so I was inspired by a comment from Amanda on my Real World Writing post from last week.  She wrote:

It's impossible to create a compelling piece of fiction without the real world. Even with fantasy, one HAS to write in real emotions and human issues. Too often, though, people look to other people's issues instead of their own.

Everything she wrote is 100% true (imho).  But the last sentence made me pause.  Why is it that people look so much beyond themselves to find emotions and stories and don't look inside?

I open this question up as a forum.  I have my own ideas, but I'm going to save them until later in the week.  Do you agree with Amanda?  Or do you think writers use more of themselves and less of everything around them?  Or do you think writers pull their ideas from thin air?

Inquiring minds and all that....

Whoot! It's my 100 Followers #Contest!!

If you've seen any of my posts since the momentous event, you know I have 100 followers.

Me = Giddy :)

So, I'm holding a little celebration at East For Green Eyes, and I hope you'll participate.  I'll make it worth your while, I promise.

Also, I have no idea what I'm doing. But you'll enjoy it nonetheless, no?

What Can You Win?

Indecisive me.  I have a few different things to offer, but I couldn't decide what was most valuable.  Plus, I have both reader followers and writer followers, each with different priorities.  So here are the possibilities.

A signed copy of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone.

A signed copy of Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick.

A chapter critique from me.  This does not have to be a first chapter as long as it is accompanied by a summary of the action thus far (which can be highly informal).

A 5-page or query critique from me.

Choice of two Vosges Chocolate Bars.  Subject to availability at my local grocer.  No promises the chocolate making it in one piece though international shipping.

The Rules

• You must be a follower. +2 pts for old followers—i.e., you clicked the happy "follow" button before I published this post.  +1 pt for new followers. 
• To participate, leave me a comment and tell me (briefly—max 20 words?) about the awesomeness that is YOU!
• In your comment, rank what you would like 1st, 2nd, etc.  The first place winner will get their top choice, and then the top-most choice for the other winners.
• This is not limited to US and Canadian residents.  You're all cool.  I can manage the postage :)
• Tweet for extra points. 1pt per Tweet, maximum 3.  Please include @rosieanabelle in your Tweet, and leave me a link below.
• Give my contest a shout-out in a blog post = +4 pts. (and leave me a link)
• Side bar announcement about the contest = +2 pts. (and leave me a link)
• Okay, folks, here's the kicker.  My blog doesn't have a very writerly title.  It doesn't include the word "write" or "edit" or my name.  It references a song lyric.  Chances are good that said song lyric has something to do with my writing (I'd say 99.99999% with a .00001% margin of error). I'm not asking you to guess, because that would take away the mystery, but for +10 extra points, you can write a short story (of no more than 500 words) that includes the phrase "east for green eyes" that is NOT from the song lyric.  Email your story to me at rlconnolly01(at)gmail(dot)com.  PLEASE include the story IN-LINE.  Attachments will NOT be read and you will not get the points for your beautiful creative efforts.

Okay, for the record, when you first enter these things, you haven't Tweeted and you haven't side-barred and you haven't blogged, and that's cool.  When/if you do, just come back and leave me another comment with your links.  If you just want to enter and not do any of the extras, that's cool, too.  Just leave me a comment.

The contest will close at midnight EST on Friday, 17 Sept.  Winners will be announced on Monday, 20 Sept.

Good luck! And thanks for following! :)

Contests and Tagging

Hey Everyone!  First, if you missed it, look over there ---------\/
(wow, that's a really horrible down arrow, isn't it?)

I have 100 followers! Come back on Monday to celebrate with me :)



CONTESTS

Here are a few contests that need to be shared with the masses:

First, Jessica, a.k.a. The Alliterative Allomorph, is holding a contest in support of The Writing Show.  If you're a writer (you know who you are!) you should definitely be involved!  Deadline is September 13!

Steph at MaybeGenius is hosting the Mash-It Up blogfest with some awesome prizes.  Entries are due by October 1.

And, really, how can you resist with a graphic like that? Haha :)

Carol at Artzicarol Ramblings is offering signed copies of her book JUNCTION 2020.  Enter by September 7.




And, just to be a tad bit embarrassed of my own excitement, Talli Roland is having a contest to celebrate her 400 followers!  Super congrats to Talli.  Be a follower of Talli's by September 30th for an automatic entry. (Sorry, but I don't have a graphic for Talli :(

Rebecca at Sonshine Thoughts and Naomi at Writing: A Soul's Way of Breathing are having their SUPER SISTER CELEBRATION. Rebecca's deadline has been extended until September 7.




Have another contest that I didn't mention?  Let me know and I'll add you :)

I'VE BEEN TAGGED...


Leigh over at That's Write has tagged me again with the handwriting game.  Please feel free to oooh and aaaah over my messy scrawl.

Write down (by hand!) on a piece of paper the following:
1. Name, Blog Name
2. Right handed, left handed, or both?
3. Favorite letters to write
4. Least favorite letters to write
5. Write out "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
6. Write in CAPS: BABOON, SPLENDOR, ONOMATOPOEIA, FLIP-FLOPS, HUZZAH!
7. Favorite song lyrics (My two: "Starlight" by Muse and (duh!) "Pretty Bird" by Jenny Lewis.)
8. Tag 7 people
9. Whatever else strikes your fancy (Macedonian.  Translation: "I really don't like writing with Macedonian letters." Reason: They're messing up my fine Russian handwriting!)

I'm not sure who to tag with this.  Seems like so many people have already been tagged.  SO, if you haven't been tagged or would like to be tagged again, consider yourself tagged.  Otherwise, continue to oooh and aaaah :)


Happy Friday, Everyone!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Weekend....

ACK! It almost snuck (er, sneaked) up on me.  Guess what, folks!

I HAVE 100 FOLLOWERS!!!

The ideas for how to celebrate have been germinating in the back of my mind, but I haven't completely settled on anything.  I promise to have the situation settled by Monday.

So be sure to drop back in on Monday and find out how you can play and what you can win :)

HURRAH!

I Love Knowing Smart People

Okay, folks.  Remember how I've been trying to find balance and order between all of the many haphazard parts of my life?  Well, I found part of the answer yesterday on the blog of a very smart woman.

Jemi (Just Jemi) described how she's ordered her blog reading with folders in Google Reader.  Totally copying from Jemi, I not only set up folders for each day of the week, but I added a Daily folder (mainly for agents' blogs), and a "Whenever" folder (e.g., for the gluten-free food blogs I follow).  I know this is going to make my life so much more manageable.

Thanks, Jemi!

So, for those of you who I've missed recently, fear not.  I shall return.  I just might not return every day.  But at least this way I get to see you sometimes! :)

******

In writing-related occurrences, if you didn't see yesterday's post, I'm excited about my new photo acquisition for a character in my WiP.  I'm still working toward finishing my latest draft of WiP#1 by the end of September.  My current word count holds at about 36K.  I didn't get any time to work on it on Monday, but hopefully I'll find some time on Tuesday.

******

Here's a school update after day 1, for those of you who might be interested.  I've gone to my first fiction writing class already, and it was awesome.  The instructor's cool, excited, and adorable.  The other students are a wide mix from campus: seniors and freshman; creative writing majors, grad-me, and psychology majors; an even balance of men and women.

It looks like it's going to be a good class.  For the first few weeks, we'll be focusing on characterization one week, story arcs another, dialogue another, etc.  And at the end of each class she'll give us 5-10 minutes and a writing prompt to get the ol' brain cells activated.  We'll see what comes out of yesterday's prompt over the weekend...

I also had my German for reading class.  It was more or less what I expected.  The instructor said from the get-go that this would be a boring class—monotonous and tedious—but I so sincerely appreciated his honesty about it.  A few years ago I took the equivalent French class, and it was torture for many, many, many, MANY reasons (are you getting how torturous it was??), but the fact that the instructor RESENTED our boredom was ridiculous.  You translate sentences, go around in a circle to talk about your translation, you get a little bit of grammar instruction, go home, prepare, and do it again the next day.  What's exciting about that?  So, kuddos for the German guy for his honesty and bluntness.  And he doesn't care that I bought the e-book, which is good since it was 1/2 the price!

For said German class, I was dreading my hike to the library in the hopes that one more German-English dictionary could be acquired from the shelves, but I didn't have to go :)  My adviser loaned me his German-English dictionary from when he took the class XX years ago.  I'm smiling at it right now.  I love when things are easier than they should be.

In that vein, I get to pick up my books tomorrow, prepackaged and waiting for me at a pick up window in the Union.  How cool is that?

Oh, and finally, after German I went for wine with my awesome friend from the Spanish department—who, coincidentally, suffered with me through the French class.  This woman is so funny that, by the end of my third glass of wine, I was laughing so loudly I was probably irritating the wait staff (who were trying to go home... we were the last folks there...).  It was a great way to end the long first day.

And, today, the gym.  Duh duh dunnnnnnnn....


So, I stink and have no good question for you, my lovely readers, today.  My excuse: I'm writing this Monday night and am an alcoholic lightweight.  Sorry!  I promise for my interesting and writing-related insights throughout the rest of the week.

Happy Tuesday, y'all :)

Return to the Old Life?

My real job started again today.  Well, actually, it never technically stopped.  I just stopped.  That's the beauty of freelance work, right?  If you don't do, it just doesn't get done.  I've promised my boss it will, and it will, just not by the time classes start on, er, Monday.

I suspect, due to a rush job that needs to be completed in the next 6-7 weeks, I won't be here quite as much.  It makes me very sad to admit this because it also means I won't have as much time for my own writing.  And while I'm taking a creative writing class, I don't imagine it will affect my work for NaNoWriMo this year.

I've been saying it all summer, but I need to prioritize.  I have a job with a definite deadline, and another one with a loose deadline.  I'm training a new employee at the publisher today and tomorrow, and I'll be her go-to person when she has questions.  Plus classes.  Plus writing.  Plus husband.  Plus laundry and cleaning and cooking and, oh, I should probably start going to the gym again. 

But not necessarily in that order.

In addition to my entire life that needs order and structure, I think my writing life does, too.  At the moment, I'm trying to follow too many blogs (and I love most of them and don't want to give them up!), have my own blog which I have already let slip over the past couple of days, working on helping out the folks in my new online critique group, putting my work over there, and, oh yeah, keeping up with my editing and planning for NaNoWriMo.  *whew*  Again, not necessarily in that order.  Unfortunately, for the past couple of weeks, other tasks from this list have trumped my own writing, and I'm not thrilled about this.

Oh, and no where in there did I mention reading.  I'm currently reading a memoir—Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bordain—an MG—Princess for Hire by Lindsey Leavitt—and Stephen King's On Writing is calling to me.  Oh, and a novel I won on GoodReads—No Place for Heroes by Laura Restrepo—and the novel I won from a FB contest—The Handbook for Lightening Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone.  And The Possessed by Elif Batuman, which I've been yearning to read for months and recently got my hands on.  Ack!

So, my attempt to organize and prioritize continues.  I think in addition to setting a minimum number of hours to work each day on the editing side, plus assuming I might do some school work here and there :) I'm going to set myself weekly goals for reading and writing.  Hopefully this will take the daily pressure off if I need to spend more time on my German, or the formatting on my editing job isn't working and takes twice as long as it should.  The writing will happen—it always does—but motivation to edit the text afterward tends to be elusive, and that's what needs to happen most right now.

Okay, ramble over.  We now return you to your regularly scheduling blogging.

How do you prioritize your life?  How do you fit writing into your (presumably) already hectic schedule?

PS—If you're doing NaNoWriMo this year, feel free to add me as your buddy.  I'm Rosie-C over there :)

Delusions of a Bloggy World

Do you schedule your posts?  
Or do you post when you finish writing?

"Overwhelmed" does not describe my blogged-out feeling this morning.  I spent my computer time this weekend writing instead of blogging or blogosphering.  Silly me to think that writing was more important!  What was I thinking?  Bad writer!  Bad!

Oh, wait.....

Anyway, this morning, I casually thought I could hop onto blogger and catch up. 

But, being Monday morning, and having more than twelve hours between my sleepy eyes and midnight GMT, I'm pretty sure every one of the 87,000 (rounding down) blogs that I follow had posted.  I couldn't even count the number of posts I needed to scroll through just to get to "1 hour ago". 

I know this goes both ways.  Some people think it's better to post in the morning.  These people (I assume, and please correct me) check their blog roll once or twice per day, and so if your post doesn't come up at the right time, they'll miss it.  But if everyone is posting at the same time, and you have 400 blog posts to read before breakfast, you can't possibly read them all.  Granted, for some blogs, if I miss them on my scroll, I'll seek them out.  But not all of them.  It would be impossible. 

So, beyond the questions above, how do you choose amongst the hundreds of blog posts published between 12:01 and 1 AM GMT (or any arbitrary hour-long period in any arbitrary timezone of a M/W/F morning)?  What makes you want to read a blog post?  What makes you pass one by?

Disclaimer: This post will be published upon completion.  Posts last week were scheduled.  I was riding the high from WriteOnCon, and wrote more blog posts in one day than anyone should tolerate.  Thus, scheduling.


PS—I would like to introduce you to one of my little muses.  She's a tiny monster who finds joy in knocking eggplants off the counter, chasing toy mice, bottle caps, and cherry tomatoes around the kitchen linoleum, and dreams of saving with world with the PowerPuff Girls.

Do You Consider Me Lovely?

Okay, okay, not me.  My blog.

Well, JC Martin (a.k.a. The Fighter Writer) thinks my blog is lovely.  Thank you, JC!

The rules for this award states that I need to pass it along:
1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered.
3. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Okay, this might be tough.  August has been a super, award-filled month.  I'm not sure who I haven't awarded something recently.  Well, how about this.  Here are a few I really enjoy.

Tara at Aléatoire
Summer at My Inner Fairy
RaShelle at A No. 2 Pencil Stat!
Steph at maybe genius

:)