An Interesting Week…Oops!

It really has been an “oops!” week. Final exams are coming up quicker than I thought – I hadn’t really looked at my calendar for anything, and the date just wacked me upside the head. I’ve only got two more weeks with my students before finals, so I’ve been scrambling to make sure everything is ready for them, and they are ready for finals!

My words have suffered. At least, in quantity. I think I’ve only written about 1,000 words this week. My goals might be a bit lofty; readjusting might be in order. Not sure. Yet.

I also (during a momentary lapse of brain function) decided to take up the A-Z blogging challenge for the month of April. So far, it’s turned out to be rather fun. And I’ve even gotten a few more followers! Yay!

So, it’s been kind of a chaotic week. Hopefully everything will calm down by Wednesday and I’ll have more production to report.

See y’all then!

Why Negative Coffee Times Negative Coffee Equals Positive Evil

The end of the semester is winding down here at the college. I didn’t have a lot of students Monday, and when afternoon rolled around, I was fading fast. I’d only slept a few hours on Sunday night, and not well. My  coffee addiction tried to send me to the coffee stand downstairs, but my logical mind prevailed, reminding me that if I had coffee in the middle of the afternoon, I’d face another sleepless night. Oh, bother.

So, Kris, who was in the lab with me and studying for a Calculus final, began sketching my babbling on the board, in the form of a graph with a cracked coffee mug. The mug was slowly dripping coffee into the negative quadrant of the graph (any value here will be negative). We all know that, in algebra, a negative multiplied with another negative will give you a positive; in physics, we’d need to determine how fast we’d have to drink the coffee. (A linear function — f(x) = x — was drawn through the graph, bisecting the coffee mug and giving us an arbitrary line from which to determine how much coffee we had available to drink. Once it dripped below the line, we’d be * outta luck.)

So, by extrapolation, here are the parameters of the graph:

coffee = good
-coffee = bad
(-coffee)(-coffee) = +evil.

Makes sense, right? (Yes, and I agree, we should have had more work to do that afternoon!)

Goals? Oh, right, let’s talk about that.

Pages: Met, thanks to Nano.

Exercise: Nope. I’ve been tutoring or dealing with pre-Christmas stuff whenever I’ve not been working.

Planning: Yes. So much so that around 4:30 this morning I woke up, realizing that I needed to find out the age of the “death” of Akhenaten so I could reasonably determine whether he had grey hair or not. Nothing like obsessing, right?

Food: Managed to stay away from the fried chicken still. Pizza, though, I ordered some because the guys asked me to. And since there was a new pizza on the menu, I tried it. I didn’t like it. Yay! I did order a vegetarian pizza with light cheese, just so I could feel a bit better about my bad behavior.

How’s everyone else doing?

Welcome to December!

Before anything, I’d like to take a moment to say “Congratulations!” to all the winners of Nano 2012 – and that includes everyone who participated. Even if you didn’t get to 50,000, it was an incredible effort. Nano provided the impetus to get more words out than may otherwise have been achieved. That’s always a win!

I won Nano, but I sure didn’t win on any other fronts over the past week.

Exercise was negligible at best. I worked late on Monday, so fried chicken ended up on the menu. Much to my shame, I indulged. The good news is that I didn’t like it as much as I normally do. Maybe I’m getting over my addiction? I’m hopeful.

My very small writing group elected to keep going throughout December, too. So, I’m plowing ahead with the rough draft of Immortal Blood, hoping to make significant progress during the holidays. That should be kind of easy, because my college will be shut down for three weeks between semesters, so I have hope.

Is everyone else as wrung out at I am?

See everyone on Wednesday.

Wow, What a Week!!

Happy pre-Thanksgiving, everyone! I’ve been running around like a crazy person buying things for Thanksgiving, and writing like a crazier one. I cracked the Nano 50,000 word goal the day before yesterday, reaching 50,088. Not that I’m quitting for the month – oh, no! In fact, I’ve got a meeting with writing friends tonight. But I’ve got to get my Thanksgiving prep done first.

Goals:

I’ve made my 80 pages for this round, having done over 200 just for Nano.

Planning has suffered somewhat this month, as I’ve been focused on output alone. I’ve had a weird few scenes centered around a therapist office. My heroine had a breakthrough – and a meltdown. It made me tear up and leak a bit while I was writing it. (Since I was at work at the time, that might have been not so great. Luckily, my students know what I’m like and it doesn’t faze them.) I got a couple of interesting motivations, from the werewolf guardian/secret assassin, so that’s going to be fun to play with. Especially since one of her phone calls is overheard by the heroine’s lover. Talk about it hitting the fan!

Exercise and junk food aversion fell by the wayside for the past week or so. My words were more important than anything, and my lack of kitchen participation showed it. Oh, well.

I’ve got to put a plug in here. Now, before I do, I have to say I’m in no way involved in this company and have not financial or personal interest in it whatsoever. My Nano output has been phenomenal this year. I’ve never done anything close to this in only 19 days. And I have to say that I don’t think I could have done it without using Scrivener. I downloaded their Nano trial version, and it blew me away. It’s now my go-to piece of writing software. I can’t say enough about it. (Getting down from soapbox now.)

Off to go make some applesauce and some cranberry/orange compote.

Have a wonderful, safe Thanksgiving. (Isn’t it wonderful – the leftovers mean we won’t have to cook, and we will have time to write more! One more thing to put on the list of things to be thankful for.)

Calculus and Cookies…

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!

Potatoes??? And Death

I’m sitting here at work, on my lunch break, and I asked my associate what I should write about today. She looked at me, smiled, and said “potatoes”. Okay…I can do that.

Potatoes. I love them. I could even be considered addicted to them. They are the bane of my existence, especially since I’m trying to lose weight. And they’re really convenient for breakfast, baked in the microwave with a couple eggs, over easy, on top. Ah, well, I must find other things for breakfast…

But Death – I had a wonderful/terrible breakthrough for the climax of Immortal Blood. In order for the heroine/love interest to fulfull the heroic destiny of such characters, she’s got to die. It’s the only way she can get to the Hall of Two Truths to speak to the gods. Bummer, that. But, as the hero, she’s got to step up to the plate.

Doing a lot of prep work still, and it’s coming along well. I got the final scene of “Broken” the other day. It came out excellent, with room for a sequel if the possibility is acted upon.

This will be a short post, as I’ve got to get back to my students. Lunch is over, so I’ll see everyone later!

Goals and Scrivener

Morning, everyone! Here’s the midweek rundown:

1. Exercise – I discovered that I procrastinate more than I should. (Actually, should anyone ever really procrastinate? I’m going to answer yes, because if I’d made it to work on time today, I might have been caught in the elevator fire we had in my building. Whew!) Ok, back to exercise. I’m finding that only walking during the commercials doesn’t work for me. There’s always something “more important” to do, like unload the dishwasher or throw another load of laundry in. So, it looks like it’s going to have to be done all at once.

I also discovered that vanity was a better motivator for me than health. Huh. Who woulda thunk it?

2. I haven’t done any “writing” yet – still doing a lot of planning. But I had this outrageous nightmare last night, which I’ll probably try to get on the page today between rounds with students.

3. No fried chicken or pizza. Go me! And the fried chicken is on sale this week, too. I came home from work late on Monday, so we had Chinese instead. Veggies were better for me, and I had leftovers for lunch. I worked out great.

4. I’m doing well on the no processed food goal. It seems that less processed equals better flavor. Things are really looking up.

Could I get some feedback on something? I’m currently using WriteWay as my writing software, but I’m considering switching to Scrivener because it also does screenplays. How do all you Scrivener users like it? Why do you like it? Have you had any experience with WriteWay?

Thanks for all your feedback – I really appreciate it!

Pressing On…

It’s only the third day, so I don’t have a lot going on.

My exercising isn’t turning out so good. I hurt my back so I’m on hiatus with only gentle walking. Time isn’t an issue right now, just being functional is okay for me.

My pages are going, but I’m not satisfied with the material. So dissatisfied that I can’t even complete it. That means I’m walking away from that scene for a while. I’m working on a new one this morning as soon as I complete my check-in. I do have a question for all of you out there, though – I know you can have co-protagonists, but can you introduce both of them in the beginning of your story? For those who are familiar with the Story Engineering paradigm, before the First Plot Point? For the Hero’s Journey, it would be before Crossing the Threshold. Thanks for all the input on that.

Woo hoo! I haven’t had any fried chicken. Or pizza. According to my stomach, life is good so far. I did make some Capellini Alfredo with chicken breasts though. It was probably as bad as the fried chicken. My taste buds loved it, and I don’t do it very often.

I’m sure I forgot something, but since I’m at work and my students are looking at me, I’ve got to run.

See you Sunday!

I’m Baaaaaaccccckkkk…….

Hi everyone!

Final exams are over, and just about all of my students made it through – at least, the ones who put forth the actual effort. So, barring one staff meeting on Wednesday, I’m free for fiction! Woo hoo!!

So, in the midst of finals madness, a weak spot in my WIP struck me. I really didn’t have a good reason for Hayleigh’s research assistant, Nasir, to travel with her back to the US. Then I realized that her countdown for success (or failure and death) wouldn’t begin until AFTER the artifact was translated. And, since Nasir is also part of the Bani Anubis werejackal clan, he MIGHT have knowledge she would need at a critical juncture. So…now he has a reason for being in Rhode Island.

I’m off to my on-campus office in about half an hour to get some work done. It’s so much easier to write away from home – that way, other tasks don’t take my attention from the page. Yay!

See you all on Wednesday!

Lara

What Planet Am I On…?

It’s been a bit crazy this week. I pulled a couple of muscles on the sides of each legs. You know, the ones that curve from your butt to the top of your legs? Wow, talk about pain!! I walked like someone who was about 120 and lame to boot. Yeah, the dreadmill stuff didn’t work so much this week. Today was the first day I was able to walk without too much pain. (And I still don’t know how it happened…)

Writing? Planning? With final exams upon us, my students are grabbing all my time. I haven’t done a thing. Except one. I did have a new story idea slam into my head. So I wrote that down and put it away in my file.

Exam last two weeks – they start tomorrow – and for my students they end on the 24th. I’m not foreseeing a lot of work accomplished until then.

This week I plan on pushing through the mud and getting through the exams to the freedom of the page!