This has nothing to do with the musical. This has everything to do with the fact that a crown fell out during dinner. Several days ago. My dentist appointment? Next Tuesday.
The pain has begun.
So, I’ve not been doing much, except thinking about what I’d like to be doing.
I’m going to go self-medicate with some single-malt scotch.
Talk to y’all Sunday.
Happy scribing!
So, my writing partner Olivia and I just got an invitation to Camp Nano. For those who don’t know, it’s another opportunity to make yourself crazy for a month trying to deliver on what most would consider impossible goals. (We know better, don’t we?)
She and I both write paranormal/paranormal suspense/paranormal romances. We’re going to get a “cabin” during April for this craziness. We need two more people to share the lunacy with, because the cabins hold four people.
Any takers? We’ll have virtual everything, from favorite snacks to favorite alcohol. The conversation will be good, the writing will be sparkling, and goals will be met and then exceeded.
Speaking of goals…
Regarding my ROW goals, I’m off my back, breathing, and back at Starbucks working. Of course, I left my TB drive at home, so everything I’m doing today is in Word, and I’ll transfer it when I get home, which will be about 11 hours from now. I’m thinking I should be making a checklist before I pack my stuff.
Have a wonderfully productive week. See y’all on Sunday!
Writing started going really well, then I got slammed with the flu. 102 fever yesterday. I’ve pulled all my intercostal muscles coughing. My throat is raw. I’m sore and full of snot.
I’ll see you all Wednesday.
For all of us mathematically-inclined (or crazy) people out there, I was thinking about a new exercise today for my students. It was an exercise in junk food. Specifically — cookies.
Now, everyone has a favorite cookie. It could be chocolate chip, Oreos, oatmeal, or those delightfully addictive mint cookies that the Girl Scouts tempt us with every year. (Mint cookies and I are very familiarly acquainted.)
What if each student, choosing their favorite cookie from a predetermined list, took the dimensions and tried to find out how many cookies could fit into a specific area. How much area was taken up by the cookies? How many cookies were used? And how much of the original area was left? Here’s where the calculus bit comes in. Integrals are used to find the area under a curve. (We knew calculus had to show up eventually.)
Get the answer right for your type of cookie, and you get to eat said cookies.
How’s that for incentive?
Personally, I can’t try the cookie thing, because I’m still trying to lose weight. And it’s going slowly, I’m afraid. So is the exercise. But some of my other goals are going well.
For instance, my planning is still going forward, as is my writing. My Nano word count is just over 20,000. I have no idea what my page count is, but I’m sure it’s inching toward my 80 pages for this quarter.
Not so good on the fried chicken front. I bought some last night on my way home from work. Once I got there, I went to bed. I was utterly exhausted, and I let the guys figure out whatever they wanted for dinner.
I haven’t ordered any pizza though, so that’s still good.
Fighting the junk food craving is a day to day adventure. But I sure wish the cravings would go away.
See you on Sunday!
Happy Wednesday, everyone!
Roommate is still stuck in bed, alternately snarling at the necessity of being in bed and moaning in pain. He’s beginning to see the light, because the pain’s finally gone down some. Good for him! (Note to self: never fall over backwards due to backing up and not seeing the rolling chair behind you. It’s not good for your balance and your long-term health.)
My friend Olivia and I have spent a lot of time at Starbucks and Hooters since my last check-in. She’s cranking out words like nobody’s business – she’s got over 30,000 just this month. But she’s a pantser. Livvi is adamant about not trying to fashion a skeleton or musculature to hang her story on. She’s just going for it. I admire that. But whenever I try it, I always get muddled, somewhere around the middle. And I usually have more storylines than I know what to do with.
Livvi’s probably some sort of writing goddess in disguise who won’t have to do a lot of rewrites. Me, I would. That’s why I’m still plodding along with my Story Engineering. And I’ve made some progress.
For anyone who’s using that method (and I know there’s a few of us) I’m having a lot of fun with the “what if” questions. I’ve explored a couple of different things that didn’t occur to me before, and I found a couple of things I needed to fix that way. It tightened up the overall plot a bit (for now), and since I’ve had to cut something I thought had real potential I might get another book out of it. Maybe.
On a different note, Livvi and I are at Hooters right now. We’ve had lunch, and are fueled with food and caffeine such that we can easily last several hours here. Woo hoo! But something…off…is going on. We’re in a booth, under a fan. Two men sat in the booth behind us. I’m sharing the side that their booth is on.
Now, I know we’re mammals, and mammals are methane-producing creatures. And that’s not the only odoriferous thing we produce. Sulfur is another. And I bet if this man’s lunch break goes on much longer I’ll discover more. Phew! This is a day I wish I had a wicked cold!
Oh, well. Maybe I can use it somewhere…in something…
In the meantime, happy writing all. See you Sunday!
Lara
Hi all,
I’ve not had a good week this week. I didn’t make the check-in on Wednesday because I was at the emergency room with my roommate. He hurt his back really bad. They sent him home with drugs, but I’ve been pretty much at his beck and call since then.
My only goal this go-round was to get this book organized. I’m using Story Engineering for that purpose, but it’s taking me a bit of time to work through it all. I don’t feel like I’m getting anything accomplished, even though technically I know I am. I’m just not seeing it.
Basically, it’s been a week of the blahs. Anyone who checks out my emotional eating blog will get a glimpse of how I dealt (or didn’t!) with that.
Here’s looking forward to a better week next week.
Lara
It’s been a terrible week. I’ve only done a couple of pages – not even one scene.
I’ve been taking care of my dog, Jordan, who finally had to be put to sleep yesterday. He was in third stage kidney failure, and the vet only gave him a couple of months at best. And that didn’t include the other things that had begun to happen to him.
I had to give him mercy.
It’s done a lot to me, though. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll feel like writing. Today and yesterday, I just feel blah.
Here’s hoping.
I’m continuing to get better. So much so that I’m feeling guilty about not hitting the gym quite yet. My day will come.
Something really crappy happened on Wednesday (which is probably why I forgot my semi-weekly post!). I wrote a relatively long bit of material on werewolf genetics. I went through about 5 or 6 pages, deciding recessives, dominants, reproductive cycles, hormones, pheremones – the whole thing. I loved it. Then I lost it.
I checked my computer. I checked my house. I even checked with my writer friend Olivia, because we’d gotten together earlier in the week. Nothing. It vanished. Poof. Into thin air. I came to the painful but necessary decision to rewrite it. And, boy, am I glad I did!
In the process of pulling it all back together, I discovered an incongruity. If werewolves and shifters reproductive systems only kick into gear when they meet their perfect genetic match, they would only reproduce with other weres or shifters. Anything else would be less than ideal, and would not be in keeping with species survival. So…it turns out there’s a combination of genes that need to be inherited for the shifting or the were ability to be actually expressed. And that’s better, because…
Our twin werewolves each “recognize” a person who is not a shifter, or not pack. However, both of these mundanes are of Italian descent. It turns out they each carry a few genes from that original Etruscan werewolf pack. Potential problem solved. Whew!
Now, how to solve the problem of writing what appears right now to be pure dreck…? Today it all seems like it’s blowing chunks. I mean, do my readers really need to know what Dawar’s compound looks like? I’m bored writing it, so I can only imagine people would be bored reading it.
But, I will take La Nora’s advice. In a nutshell, it’s this, paraphrased: vomit it out and get it on paper. You can always fix it later. But you can’t edit a blank page. I’m going to try and make that my mantra. And, while I’m sitting here in the bookstore waiting for one of my students, I’m going to yank out a blank page and keep going.
(No, I’m still not caught up….)
It’s been established that I’m not dying. Yet. Yay, me!
I had a major breakthrough yesterday – in fact, more than one. I was able to tighten up the plot of my WIP called “Primal Hungers,” the second book in my Witches and Weres series. That probably contributed to my other breakthrough – the physical one. I’m really feeling much better.
If any of you out there are foodie’s, I urge you to go to YouTube and search for something called “The Big Waste.” It was a Food Network special on food waste in the United States. It was really eye-opening, and it gave me bits to write about. Life is good.
I didn’t catch up on my pages yet, but I’m working on it. According to my posted goals, I should have 44 pages by the end of the day today. I’m not close to that, but I’m not ready to revamp my goals just yet.
I’m just gonna keep on plugging…
It’s right around midnight as the dog and I sit here channel surfing. Trying to breathe is taking up a lot of my energy. I haven’t been able to do any writing the past few days. This cold’s about wiped me out. I’m on my fourth box of Kleenex since Wednesday. Blech. I had no idea the human body could snuffle in so many different ways. I feel like a Heffalump.
On the upside, I’ve been able to make a few notes for a couple of different scenes. I should be able to work on them in a day or so. Apparently werewolves are horrified by dogs being kept as pets. Especially when they’ve been neutered. We’ll see what they do about it.
Off to find more Kleenex. (sneeze)
Lara McGill 