Mmmm, progress. It happens in tasty little bites, and you don't notice until you're full how much has been accomplished (eaten?).
I think this week has been a series of those Little Hostess mini muffins-- the blueberry kind in a lunchbox size pack. There's the surprise of the blueberry tartness, and the base note of the cakey sweetness, and overall fluffiness.
For one, my poem "Subconscious Answer" has been scheduled for publication October 19th on EverydayPoets.com. Yay! I have finally finished with revisions, and the editors and I are all happy. It's very different from how I initially conceptualized, but I think in the end that's a good thing.
Also, I added about 400 words to my first chapter. Not much, but considering I doubled the original (and total) word count, . . . . . haha.
And there were a few poems somewhere.
So it's little bites. Getting somewhere.
Write Now:
What I'm listening to: TV..... not even sure what
What I want most: Venom by Jennifer Estep!!
Moving into my new apartment has really improved my writing. It's fascinating how the little things have helped me out. Like, having unobstructed wall space.
(It's an mass-plosion of plotting Post-its.)
And having my own desk. Technically, I've had one for my whole college career, but actually building my own desk--
(from this)
(to this)
-- has somehow made me really excited about plopping my rear-end down for hours of writing.
Of course, hours of writing turns into surfing the net, reading my many books in the to-get-to pile, and other neglected objects d' interest.
However, not tonight. Tonight I have paint fume headache, and am going happily off into TV land to rest my aching mind.
CSI here I come.
Write now:
What I'm listening: About to plug in to the dulcet tones of Gil Grissom
What I want most: this headache to go away. The Tylenol to kick in. And the peace to be restored.
Right? Right.
*Things*:
-The very cool radio show that I was on yesterday (for unrelated, school stuff). I try to keep pretty anonymous here on the blog (despite having my name blazoned across everything) meaning no photos, no proper names of other people, no city names, no campus name, etc etc etc. But! if you have the burning desire to hear me speak you can find the two part segment here and here. Sadly, my voice is more attractive than I am.
- Proposals. Again, sadly, the unattractive kind- namely, for an independent study course. Fun (in it's own, sadistic way) but in legalize. Or rather, academia.
-Personal milestones. Like getting my first apartment!!! (With Roomie the Long Suffering One and MlleDiabolique -- who I suppose now inherits the secondary title of Long Suffering Roomie #2) VERY exciting stuff, including bookcases (bookcases!) filling cabinets (filling cabinets!) organizing drawers (organizing!) and bento boxes (bentos!) as well as decorating (decorating!) and more decorating (decorating!). But it's a HUGE timesuck (slurp!). So my last few days... yeah, what happened to the last few days?
-Volunteering. Today, actually. Good, but less time for blogging and/or homework.
-Finals! Bah, humbug.
So, little mental space for writing, even if I know theoretically that there is the physical time for it somewhere (theoretically).
So to fulfill the "writing" part of this blog, I give you the only 12 and 1/2 writing rules you'll ever need, and the ones that currently reside above my desk (along with the homemade "Abandon Logic, Just Write" sign). If there turns out to be wall space in my new bedroom (I doubt it, bookshelves take precedence over posters) I may buy the real glossy sheet, instead of the out-of-focus version I have now.
But first, bookcases.
Hi there, and thanks for participating in the DWT Poetry Competition.
Your poem went live today. You can see it here: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/dwt-poetry-competition-eleventh-round/
Me: *blink, blink.* OH right!.......
So I entered this poetry contest. I didn't realize that the winner is chosen by popular vote, but as it is, you should go over to DWT and scroll through the poems and vote for your favorite.
Not that I'm hinting at anything. I admit to nothing. But I might have (generously, against my baser nature and first inclination) voted for someone else, which redirected me to the results of the poll, and saw that my own humble work got no votes. At all.
Ah, well. It was not the best fit in the world. poem and contest, and I probably should have sent something else in. Again, my fault for not doing better research beforehand. I might also have been overly wordy. Not exactly lyric. I haven't revised that poem in a while, and it might be due for a little tune up in the Ye Olde Poem Repair Shoppe.
In other news-- I joined Read Write Poem, a sub-group of NaNaWriMo for the National Poem Writing Month (that is, April). I haven't really done anything for April/ NaPoWriMo (argh! too many acronyms) but I'm trying to take advantage of the prompt-a-day so that I can build up my reservoir of poems again. I am depleted, and I am currently just waiting (waiting, waiting, waiting) to get my rejections so I can send them back out again.
Stupid life, that. Therefore, ONWARD! More poems! More writing! More! More! More!
... oh right. Burnout.
Gasp! I said the word. I think I might be suffering from a touch of burnout. So I'm using the prompts and other ways to force myself to write. And I'm trying to focus on fiction, because I have no self-imposed publishing goals, and there is not the same kind of pressure. But I may think seriously about backing off from poetry and switching to fiction (seriously) for a while. We'll see.
I don't know. It's all in a muddle, and my head just hurts, and I'm in the mood where I just want to curl up with a book and do NOTHING.
Oh right. I did that yesterday. And the day before. And likely will do again today. Trips to the library are bad.
1) "Hear Haiti" Writers night: I went with my dear friends MlleDiabolique and Mistress of Anthropology Doom, and there was a slide show with pictures and background music, along with yummy yummy Haitian food. I've never had plantains, and I finally got to try some! There was curry chicken, rice and beans, cabbage, and potatoes. And plantains, of course. And homemade ginger beer, but it was STRONG, and I admit I was sadly unable to drink the whole glass. AnthropologistFAIL. And the writers were great. I'll have to look some of them up (I didn't grab a program!), although I need to work on my French a little bit first.
Oh, yeah! I got to take home a whole plate with me as well! So Haitian food for two nights!
2) I rediscovered Mary Stewart. I went to the library recently with Roomie the Long Suffering One, and found her among the shelves. I started reading Stewart in my childhood, maybe 11/12/13, so finding her was like comfort food, chicken noodle soup for the bibliophile, crawling right back into the warmth of a security blanket. It was great. I found 3 new titles that I never read before (Thornwyld, Rose Cottage, and The Ivy Tree) and now that I've finished all three (in two days!!!) I've have to hunt down the only three remaining titles that I have not yet read (Touch Not the Cat, The Wind Above Small Isles, and the Storm Petrels.) Also, what does it say about me that my formative years were spent reading gothic romances?
3) I love Disappointed Realist's piano compositions. I'm obsessed with the one "another untitled piece"-- something about it makes me feel like a Jane Austen heroine. Like when Keira Knightley is standing on top of the cliff in the 2005 version (I geekily know all the release dates of Jane Austen movies. I was having a phone conversation with The Maternal Figure earlier, and whipped out the release dates of Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Emma (1996) from nowhere- and they are HER favorite movies, not even mine. I have no clue how I know this, but I do. I also know that there are three previous versions of P&P before the K.K. one- 1940, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson and written by Aldous Huxley; 1980 with Elizabeth Garvie; and 1996 with Colin Firth. Yes, I own all 4. Yes, I know all the release dates.) Point being, I love his work.
4) I love libraries. Love, love, love. I came back with 3 Mary Stewarts, one book on the Algerian War of Independence (A Savage War of Peace), one on the FBI high-tech crime unit (Who Killed Precious?), one on forensic investigators (No Stone Unturned), one on a park ranger (Nature Noir), two on Japanese detective fiction (Murder Most Modern and Purloined Letters) and one on Japanese literary feminists (The Bluestockings of Japan) and one on American poet H.D. (Collected Poems, 1912-1944). My tastes are... eclectic, to say the least.
5) I am writing fiction again. Poetry is not, I must remind myself, my only talent.
Right now:
What I'm listening to: "another untitled piece" by Disappointed Realist
What I want most: the other Mary Stewart books. Library tomorrow it is.
BLAHHHHHHHHHH!
So. Post. Thinking. Yes. Thinking is good.
Um, writing. Posting about writing. Writing... writing is... writing is...
is...
....
Post was not planned.
Usually I have a general preconception of what I want to talk about, and I think I had one for today, except, well-- I forgot it. So now, scrambled brain. Rambling post.
General Updates: More poems out. More poems written. SheWrites is generally BAMF. Academia today was pretty much BAMF. My downloading program is NOT! b.a.m.f. so I have over 5 hours to wait for my copy of Kuch Naa Kaho (one of my favorite bollywood films ever. I have a thing for Aishwarya Rai, just the same as I have a thing for Angelina Jolie... nobody else seems to like them, but I adore both. In some ways, I view them very similarly.)
Um, videos. We might as well talk about videos. These are some of my favorite movies, in no particular order:
1) The Invisible (alright well this one does happen to be my #1 favorite)
2) Mansfield Park
3) Sahara
4) Atlantis
5) Kuch Naa Kaho
6) North and South (no it's not a FILM, per se, but I count it anyways)
7) The Secret Garden
8) Hackers
9) Pride and Prejudice
10) You've Got Mail
There are others, but these come easiest to mind. And you know the strongest trend among all of these movies? Strong central romantic relationship.
*Foreheadslap*
I have turned out to be an incurable subconscious romantic. Lord help me now, I cannot preserve my cynical facade without strong binding glue and some metallic glue.
Right Now:
What I'm listening to: "Kuch Naa Kaho" title track
What I want most: this stupid movie to download faster!!!!!!.....
I've written before that I suffer easily from acute attacks of professional jealousy; but I also suffer easily from acute attacks of professional depression. I easily fall into that hopeless spiral of "I haven't written anything, I'll never get published"-- which, of course, ensures that I'll never be published, because I'm too busy stuffing bonbons down my self-pitying gullet or huddled in a miserable ball in my bed.
Today was just a minor episode, but I recognized the symptoms and wished myself out of that place.
Of course, that didn't magically Prozac me into a published author. *snort*
No, what I find is, when I fall into these moments is go out... and write.
I submitted a couple of poems to an undergraduate literary competition tonight. I feel good, because it means that I'm battling the self-pitying doldrums. I don't want to be the kind of writer that is always moaning about missed chances or how the Muse isn't working for me. Believe me, I have those moments. I have them a lot. I don't want them, but I get them. (Like other things we won't mention.) But I can't think- or write- about that all the time. You'll get bored. I'll get bored. We'll collectively want to stab my eyes out with a spoon. So... no more.
But more of the submissions. More of the writing. More of the successes, and more of the focus on the successes. And more of the interesting topics for this blog. More. Not less.
No more of the doldrums.
Just see what I can do before Monday.
Right Now:
What I'm listening to: "The Walk" by Imogean Heap
What I want most: To stop moping and do something with my life
Hello everyone!
It's been quite a while since my last post, and I'm sorry for the AWOL act I just pulled. I'll try to go back and fill in the blanks, but it's going to be sporadic.
Whew! So school has started again, that special blend of horror, excitement, nervousness, and sheer chaos. I finally have my schedule finalized, and I am so glad to get that stress behind me. There were a few days for which my sanity was feared. But that's another blog post.
Anyways, GOOD NEWS!! I got into my Life Writing class, which is so freaking awesome! We study memoirs and journals, from the perspective of those that others have written and from the perspective of writing out own. I am so stoked for this. Journal writing has always been a failure for me in the issue of consistency, but memoir writing has really struck a spark since completing this summer's Intro to Creative Writing class. My first class is today, and I am so excited to get in there, (*warning: nerd alert*) grab the syllabus, and get writing!
Well, that's about it on the creative writing front. I've been running around like a mad, headless chicken trying to take care of extracurriculars (I'm president of two clubs, ay me, what was I thinking?) and other various start of school activities. So I'm a little drained. But hopefully with the start of Life Writing, I can get back into the creative flow.
That's all, folks!
Right Now:
What I'm listening to: "Peggy Sue Got Married" by Buddy Holly
What I want: more time. But that's old news.
Today is one of those days where caffeine and chocolate might be the only things that get me through. I woke up and had an all crushing WAVE of writing duties sweep into my consciousness. I realized that I have slacked off entirely this last week, and although I'm going to try and catch up, I have a feeling that some things are going to snake around and bite me right in the behind. It's just one of those feelings you recognize only after there is nothing you can do about it.
But that's okay. I'll just have to deal with it like any adult would. So, on with the scheduled programing.
1) I'm moving on from my urban fantasy genre phase. I can recognize it's passing. Mystery occupied my 8 to 12-year-old stage, classical fantasy my 12-16 stage, and urban fantasy my 16-20 phase. Now I recognize the apathy and restlessness, and suspect I will shortly be moving on into the literary genre for the next phase. Not to say that I'll abandon my favorites of the genre, or abandon the stories I've got going. They'll stick around. It's just time for me to move on. (I always did like the idea of blurred genre anyways,)
2) I posted my entry into ROD #5 today. As always, the entry is limited to 250 words, and is based an illustration you can see here at Deadline Dames. My entry has a classical sci-fi twist to my normal urban fantasy, and I hope you enjoy reading it. I had fun ignoring convention. Any comments are welcome.
***
This really had not been one of her brighter ideas.
Instead of blending with the other passengers, she felt ridiculous, highlighted in her cloak and dress against the clouds visible through the spaceship's observation deck. The ship began to dock, and the planet reflected its cool displeasure in the gray and stormy weather. Empira always was inhospitable, but not because of the environment.
No, no. It was because of the vampires.
Vampires exclusively colonized Empira since the mid 2500s, and Kinsey, more fool her, decided to flaunt, or at least test, the decree against unregistered human visitors. The ruling government had to be extremely careful about the well-being of all humans on the planet, for propaganda reasons, and the application process took years. For law-abiders.
Kinsey shifted restlessly, trying to discretely itch at where her corset dug into the ... ahem, more fleshy parts of her anatomy. If she wasn't killed by the vampires, she was definitely killing whoever suggested this stereotype of a costume. Then again, only if the vampires didn't kill her. She had planned on the likelihood of getting arrested, and then petitioning from jail to find Grampa Al, but who really knew how vampires would react? Maybe they would simply deport her. Maybe they would throw her into jail but then would refuse her request to search for him.
Argh! So many things could go wrong. Next time, she would simply refuse to search out any long lost relatives. Screw the treasure. It wasn't worth it.
***
3) Blurbs suck. Did you know that? The purpose of a blurb is to grab your attention and your interest, but most times if I read the back cover I gag. And refuse to buy the book. If I skip the blurb and read the first chapter, I usually buy the book. Isn't that interesting?
4) I'm bored. Which means that changes are coming. If I'm bored, then I scheme to make myself un-bored. And my schemes are... well, my schemes might be slightly legendary around the house. The Maternal Figure at least knows to be scared. So, fair warning. (*evil grin*) But this is all a subject for another post.
5) I've updated my Tumblr site. Oh, didn't know I had one? Well, I do, but I haven't been promoting it well. Or keeping up. But again, that's all changing (see bullet number 4.)
6) I have a new Sekrit Shiny Project that I'm working on. I'm growing more and more excited about this one, and I really hope that everything works out. Not a story, but just general literary kickA**- ness. And dang, I wants it.
7) I am now on GoodReads. I'll be poking around and figuring it out in the next couple of days. I would love for you to contact me there.
8) I am now on CritPartner Match. I will be updating my profile after this post, but I am currently looking for another crit partner or two who deals with creative non-fiction. Again, I would love to see you there. Or, if you happen to be interested in CP-ing creative non-fiction, or know of someone else, please leave a comment.
9) I'm bored. And I'm not getting feedback from YOU readers. Are you there? Do you exist? Are you really reading, or do you just say that you are? Soooo I was thinking: question and answer time! At the moment I include music and the "what I want most" in the Right Now section. Would you be interested in a status (not one of those horrible mood trackers, but an elegant version?) or in a location ("at a table in Starbucks" or "the library" for example)? You can decide what I do! Vote now in the comments section!!
10) I want to build more than a blog but also a resource for writers. Well, resource might be the wrong word, but a community. I truly enjoy Debbie Ridpath Ohi's comics, and I would love to do something similar. A resource for the writing life, I guess I mean. I was happy with my post about ABC's writing show Castle, and I want to continue. Do you have any suggestions? Again, head down to the comments section! And for now, I give you a new band that I found on You Tube, whose song "Dusty Typewriter" tickled my writer's fancy.
Over and out.
Right Now:
What I'm listening to: Novelle Vague's Dusty Typewriter.
What I want most: an impressive blog
I realize that my weekend has extended a little bit further than planned. But whatever. I'm taking today as a break. I deserve it, I think. (*tries to recall good actions in past few days....*)
I realized today that I have more drafts than posts in the last month, and that all the drafts don't even fit on my dashboard page. I am horrified. I am struck with a guilty conscience. (*feeling very small*)
I'll try very very hard in the next few days to be good. I promise. Scout's Honor. But for now, I'll just assure you all that I'm alive, and doing reasonably well in the writer-y area of my life.
I just need to actually... well, write.
Right Now:
What I'm listening to: Nothing. Headache du jour.
What I want most: more time, but it's becoming a litany.
So I crashed on a table-top for an hour, when all I wanted to do was lay my head down for a second....
Whew! Have these past couple of weeks been hectic or what? So much so that, unfortunately, lots of things... blog, website, writing, reading, etc etc etc. have fallen WAY behind. WAY, WAY, behind. Now, hopefully, I'm back to a place that encourages a return to routine, and all will be well again. (hahhahahaha, like I'm ever going to sucessfully post every single day, no matter what place I'm in)
Well, I have tragic news to report. My bags were lost in transit as I went on vacation last week, and still are yet to be found. Hope is growing dim for their recovery, and I'm mourning the loss of some of my favorite clothing and makeup items. But most especially, mourning the lost of all my journals!!! I can't believe it, can't believe how stupid I was to trust my journals to a checked bag instead my carry-on like normal! So I've lost my journal, my writing calender, my book release calender, and my notes journal. Argh! I think I might even have lost my regular ole school calender, but I'm not for sure. I'm so peeved!!!! Finally, finally I thought I had things under control and worked out, and boom!!! Loss of all hope. The airlines is giving me a hundred bucks compensation, but I don't care! I want my bags! (*tearsofrage*)
Sigh.
So, to focus on the positive. (No wait, there is none. Ok, yes there is. But I wish there wasn't.)
I found an older book of Lilith Saintcrow's in B&N the other day, which was way exciting. I also found a new release in a series that I had been following, as well as three new authors, giving me hope for the literary state of Barnes and Nobles. And it's December 12th, which means it's just that much closer to spring '09, when the new Ilona Andrews book comes out. (*drool*) Can't wait. And the next Lilith Saintcrow releace in August '09. Oh, yummy. 2009 is gonna be a great year.
Well, I think that covers most of the happenin's. See y'all tomorrow!
Right now:
What I'm listening to: The TV in the next room over. Indistinct, white noise.
What I want most: The sequel to Steelflower. Come on, Lilith Saintcrow, hurry up! lol.
Argh... I think I just hit a wall. Psychological, most likely, of course, but a wall nevertheless. I have seriously run out of topics to pursue, and my creative bug died unexpectedly today in the middle of some mental stretching. Quite sad. It was going so perfectly too. I've had a mental image of a young woman haunting me for a week or so, and I've been dying to get her drawn out on paper. A challenging task, when you realize that I've had no formal or informal training, and have sketched only a handful of times in my life. But today she finally convinced me, and I sat down to draw. I actually am very happy with the result- not exactly what I envisaged in my head, but definitely representational enough. I even paired her picture with a song that invokes the themes that went with my mental image. Very lucky. I have the themes for the entire book, already written out for inspiration! And then my play-list changed, and a new song came on, my mental image changed from a stationary pose to a one of mid-movement, and boom!- everything fled. My mental image gone, the inspiration from the song lack-luster, the drive to eke my creation out on paper disappeared... Maybe I'll take a bit of a break and do some stretches in the other direction. I have a couple of writing magazines that I haven't read yet, and sadly, I still haven't even started the research on my serial, much less actually start writing, so I think I'll dedicate tonight to the behind the scenes maintenance work. I have some contests coming up as well, and I have nothing written, and sadly nothing in storage available either, so that means starting from scratch, and I think I've been stressing about that. So I'll just take a step back, take a deep breath, and start again tomorrow.
In a magazine I read earlier today there was mention of this program, supposedly the Netflix of magazines. I think I'll check that out, maybe use it for tomorrow's post. Hopefully the funk I'm in will have disappeared before then.......
Right Now:
What I'm listening to: The news in on in the background, but all I'm hearing is the throb of my headache....
What I want most: Ooh. Tough one. Energy, I think. A re-boot and the download of an updated version of myself. lol
Oh boy. Has this been the day of all days. Apparently my dog decided to make friends with the wrong end of a skunk and consequently I spent all of my evening doing damage control. The house is terrible, the dog little better, and of course me tainted as well, so no wonder I had to knock back the literary equivalent of a few stiff ones. But I was good and avoided temptation in the form of Barnes and Nobles, mainly because I've gone two days in a row and certainly haven't finished all I've bought, although I am close. Sorta. Enough to rationalize going back tomorrow. And I definitely deserve to escape for a few hours from this den of ode du scunkque.
Part of my B&N purchases were the first and second seasons of House, which have put me in such an obsessive funk that I forgot the first night to write a blog, then stayed up all night the second night (ignoring the blog) so that I crashed so hard the third night is all groggy (unable to even comprehend what a blog might be) and only on the fourth night to recover my wits enough to guilty avoid the blog because I ignored a literary pursuit in favor of gasp! base, crass pandering to the ignorant masses and the equivalent of creating brain rot that leds to an early and ignoble creative death of all academia or intellisia ...the TV. lol.
Tomorrow's forray back into the wonderland that is A BOOKSTORE (any will serve, but B&N happens to be the only one in my hometown that carries an acceptably wide variety of genres. Apparently here second-hand bookstores are only required to stock paperback romances. Diverting and delightful, I'm sure, in the right quantity and at the right time, but for a girl that literally goes to the bookstore 3 times in a week more options are a neccessity) is stemmed by a determination to get, sigh, yet another calender. My zeal for seperating notebooks based on different purposes have become slightly ridiculous, even to myself. I have my school calender, all set up with highlighted classes and study periods. A small notebook for writing down in brief the events of the day, like lunch with my roommate or a special lecture I attended. A larger, gilt-edged leather bound notebook that is my journal of emotions and impressions, written sporadically instead of the daily chronology that is the events notebook previously mentioned. The new writing calender, with my daily activities like this blog and the weekly installations to my serializations, along with the writing contests and other deadlines I've taken on. There's the thick journal called the "Someday Book" which has all the advantages of the goals and dreams and magazines clippings of things I want someday as well as my planning to SOMEDAY actually get around to actually writing it. Next are the mini Moleskine journals for seperate novel ideas that I'm working on. And then there's this new calender I want, designated for the recording of book release dates. I'm determined that I'm to be a true bibliophile, a renaissance reader all across the board, and have at least one book release per month, and ideally one per week. Of course, that means that I need to discover a whole ton more writers that I like, who are all publishing in a timely manner. And, of course, this means more trips to Barnes and Nobles. And, of course, I certainly wouldn't be banking on that fact. Oh no. Never. =)
Right Now:
What I'm listening to: Nothing. Mssr Peppee le Pew has given me a monsterous headache.
What I want most: The smell to magically disappear from my carpet overnight, of course.
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