Lost and Found

I'm relieved to report that I found my missing pages. I had them saved, but for some reason I hadn't added them to my main manuscript file. Lesson learned - scavenger hunts are way overrated.

So, not only did I actually write what I remembered writing, I found it again. Hoorah! And, since the chunk was around 30 pages long, it's an extra relief to have it back. The next CWC meeting is just around the corner, and I'm up for submitting.

In other news, I'll be doing the Thanksgiving thing over the next few days and have decided to officially bail out on NaBloPoMo. It figures that I'd decide to do a blog post challenge during a month when I have no internet hookup at home. Hopefully, that's a second lesson learned.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Glitches

You know what the problem of doing NaBloPoMo is? Not having an internet hook up at home.

I've been able to do the writing part okay, but it's the putting it together with the posting part that's problematic.

Right now, I'm wrestling with a technology issue. What issues do you have to wrestle with when you're working on a writing project?

Oracle Prologue, Part 3

For a moment, all thought of the pain from her injuries was eclipsed by surprise. Pink, mica-flecked quartz swarmed together to form a rough oval. Two large cabochons of labradorite crawled in toward the center and Jalena was struck with the impression of eyes. Carnelian lips added to the impression and shadows made by the shifting tiles completed the image of a face. Azurite hair streamed back from the head, twitching as if blown by a breeze.

Jalena shook her head. Was she still in a dream? The lapis lazuli eyes met hers. Stone lips curled up in a welcoming smile. Using her good hand, Jalena pushed herself to her feet. This time she did not slip. More tiles cascaded across the wall, this time coalescing into a hand. It gestured for Jalena to approach.

After a moment's hesitation, she did as the mosaic bade. If this was really happening, as the pain of her injuries testified, it could be no less than a miracle. If she was dreaming this, and the pain with it, then she had no reason not to. She looked down at the stream in the floor. Everything she believed told her that to cross the stream was sacrilegious. Decades of respecting the goddess' sacred space were difficult to overcome.

On the wall, the mosaic beckoned again. Jalena closed her right hand into a fist. The cut burned, spurring her to raise her foot and jump across the gap. She landed roughly on the other side, heart speeding at the thrill of being somewhere she was not supposed to be.

Jalena walked slowly toward the wall. She closed the distance with just a few steps and stood almost nose to nose with the face. She stood mesmerized, holding the goddess' gaze. Tiles scraped against each other as the mosaic hand raised with the palm facing Jalena. She raised her right hand. Blood dripped off it to splatter on the floor. Acting on instinct, Jalena pressed her own palm against the wall. Despite the chill of the morning, the stone felt warm. A jolt like electricity ran through her. Carnelian lips parted. The goddess spoke.

Oracle Prologue, Part 2

The pre-dawn gloom lightened to a hazy shade of blue. Soon, the other clergy would begin stirring. Jalena should prepare for morning prayers. No more at peace than she had been when she woke, Jalena rose. As she did, her foot caught on the hem of her robe and she fell to the floor, slamming her knees on the stone with a shock of fierce pain. Her right hand struck the corner of the stone stream, breaking her skin across the edge. Jalena bit back a cry of pain. A rivulet of blood ran down the stone to mingle with the water. The blood darkened the water in a cloud that looked black in the low light.

Knees and hand stinging, Jalena struggled to rise. Blood slickened the stone. Her hand slipped as she tried to gain purchase. Her knees hit the stone again. Agony rushed through her legs. Frustrated and hurt, Jalena felt tears force themselves into her eyes.

In front of her, something scraped. Jalena blinked back tears. Another scrape. The noise came from the other side of the stream. Scrape. It was the sound of stone on stone. Jalena took a deep breath and rocked back on her heels. She held her injured hand in front of her. Blood streaked down the front of her robe. The scrape came again.

Sight blurred, she looked ahead, trying to find the source of the noise. Something was moving on the wall. The scraping grew quicker, like the shuffle of a card deck. She blinked to clear her vision and saw that the sound came from the mosaic. Tiles of blue, green, black, and every other color on the wall squirmed against each other, struggling to go in different directions.

Exercise Hunt

So, with my goal of doing some writing exercises this month, I'm having a difficult time finding exercises. I went to my new local library and found one book with actual exercises (but, about 15 books on how to get published).

In light of my difficulty, I want to ask you if you've got any good exercises to share?

Exercise: A Single Moment

Raindrops tap danced on the windshield, tappity, tappity, tap. Lorena's hands were stuck to the steering wheel like they were glued there. Her lips were sealed like there had been extra glue left over from her hands. Her eyes pointed straight ahead.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Meg eyed the car radio, hesitating. She wanted to turn it on, to have some sound in the car other than the beat of rain, the periodic swipe of windshield wipers, and the silence.

Meg reached out her hand until her fingers were nearly on the radio's volume knob. Was that her imagination, or did Lorena's jaw just clench? Meg let her hand fall to her lap and she wrapped it around the strap of her backpack. The fine wrinkles around Lorena's eyes smoothed slightly as she relaxed.

Tappity, tappity, tap.

“I'm sorry,” Meg said.

Lorena said nothing.

Tappity, tappity, tap.

Productive Use

I've been thinking of NaBloPoMo and ways that I can use the challenge in a way that's more productive than simply getting words out. Posting every day just to post every day invites tangents and ramblings. I can't say that's really an important use of my time.

So, I've decided to focus my posts by doing some writing exercises and writing bits of my current writing projects in them. I'm not sure how much of each I'll end up doing, but my goal is for each post after this one to be creative. A scene, a description, dialogue, etc.

I'll give a bit of intro for each bit, and if it's an exercise, I'll let you know what the goal of the exercise was so you can play along if you'd like. I hope you'll join me for at least some. If you do, put it up on your blog and let me know so I can link to your post!

NaBloPoMo

With October rolling to a close (What?! How'd I miss a whole month?!) and me being a slacker of late - uprooting my life to move and start a new job is hardly a good enough excuse - I've decided that National Blog Posting Month may be a good way to
A. Make up for my slackerness
B. Get some blog/writing momentum

Ergo, I've decided that my November goal will be NaBloPoMo. I invite all y'all to join me, too. For all of you who're nearby, I propose an end of the month meet up at my new favorite yogurt shop in Pueblo to celebrate all our blog-posty-awesomeness. Come on, you know you love frozen yogurt. Who's in?

Spoken Word

The past little while my new job has been my main priority. The good news is that I've gotten to the point where I feel like I've got a good grasp on the lay of the land. Now, though, comes the even more challenging part - beginning the nitty gritty of the work itself. For September, I'm also going to move to a new place.

In light of all this, and my long daily commute, I'm dubbing September in honor of audiobooks. No particular goals here, but I'll be talking about them on the blog.

Current audiobook: Cold Mountain

Unwrapping Old Stories

The first thing I had to do with my 100 pages challenge was decide what to print on those pages. Cue a trip to my old computer files. I skimmed over file names, focused on finding stories that were old enough that I could look at them with fresh eyes.

Suffice it to say, there were a solid handful that I haven't looked at in a few years. One or two, I didn't even recognize the file name. I saw a file and literally had no idea what it was. Then I opened it and viola! It was kind of like Christmas morning.

Current printed page count: 33

35,000 Words

Sadly, it looks as if John has won the contest. *cough, cough* I mean, congratulations, John!

In all seriousness, cheers to all who participated. I've done short (two week) contests before, and now I've completed a two month contest. All-in-all, I think the two month contest is actually harder. Marathons are tough. It's easy to be ultra focused and ultra motivated for a short period of time. It's tough to maintain it.

At the end of the contest, I am not the winner, nor am I even in the top three. However, and this is important, Jenny did not make me cry. So, even though I'm not necessarily THE winner, I call it a win.

Also, that goes for the 35,000 words I've written in the past two months. That comes out to 100 new pages, or 2 full CWC submissions, or about 4 months before I'll be submitting pages I haven't written yet. That's cool.

Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I Love ya, tomorrow!

Tomorrow's the last day of the contest and I confess I just wasn't up to the challenge. Too many balls to juggle lately and there were a few others I decided were more important than the contest. I'm feeling alright with how I did, even knowing I'm getting beat.

For tomorrow, my aim is 35,000 words. It's a nice, round number to finish on.

Final Time

Boy howdy, summer classes go fast.

Today's the day my 121 students had their final exam. Their final is to write a self-evaluation essay discussing their writing abilities.

It's fascinating to see their commentaries on how their writing has changed, in some cases a great deal, in just two months.

Now comes the grading. Today I collected two papers - one last formal paper that they've been working on in class, and the final. Grades are due Wednesday. You can guess what my plans for the next two days involve.

It's going to be tough to do final grading and still make progress on the contest, but I'm going to do my best to do exactly that. Here goes a very intense few days.

10... 9... 8...

We're getting down to the last few days of the contest and people are starting to feel the pressure. Jenny did an update yesterday, and already, those tallies are inaccurate. Now, on the last leg of the race, everyone's reaching down deep and pulling out the stops.

Honestly, I don't know if I have a chance at all of winning - the timing of the contest has been working against me and going into the last week I'm also facing grading finals and essays from my summer class (which has exactly synced with the contest). As of Monday, I'm going to collect approximately 45 essays which I'll have to read and grade by Wednesday, when final grades are due. Piece of cake.

Oh, and I have about 20,000 words to write, post haste, in order to catch up to the contest leaders. And that's only if none of them decide to write any more. Yeesh.

We're coming down to the finish line, folks and all I can say is, in the immortal words of Samuel L. Jackson on Jurassic Park, "Hold on to your butts."

America's Got Talent

I'm not much of a one for reality TV shows. So much of it is focused on whining, cat fights and petty melodrama and I've got little patience for it. However, there are a couple of reality shows that I'm totally hooked on. The main difference for me is that these shows are about people who have genuine talents facing off against each other to see who wins out. Less politics, more talent.

Right now I'm in the midst of this season's offerings of Last Comic Standing, Hell's Kitchen, and America's Got Talent. To me, the last one is the best of them all because it gives a chance to people who ordinarily wouldn't make it. Have you seen Airpocalypse? I mean, come on, they're an air band for crying out loud! And, all the same, I must admit they're way entertaining. Though, I'll add that some of the acts that made the cut to Hollywood are absolutely not anything I'd vote for. Mary Ellen and Ronith being at the top of my "Are you kidding me?" list.

Definitely lots of cool performances overall, though, and I'm pleased as punch that some of my favorites got sent to the next level. If you don't watch the show, you should check out the Hollywood acts. There's some top-notch material. Here's who I'm rooting for:

Ali and Christina
CJ Dippa
Debra Romer
Fighting Gravity
Lindsey Stirling
Luigi
Michael Grimm
Prince Poppycock
Studio One Young Beast Society
Taylor Matthews
Wreckless Dance Crew

Who are your favorites?

Bring on the Second Half

It seems like June went by in a flash. I give a lot of the credit for that to teaching a class this summer. Having an abbreviated, two-month semester means a pretty hardcore schedule of prep and grading, especially since I'm teaching the summer class at a new school.

I didn't make as much progress with the writing contest as I had hoped, but my plan is to step up my pace now that I've developed a rhythm with the summer class.

What I do know for sure is that I've gained some distance between me and Jenny, which will make it more difficult for her to accomplish her contest goal of beating me and making me cry. Now if only there was less distance between me and the other competitors who're way out ahead.

From the Starting Block

The starting pistol's been fired and the race is on. My June goal is simple: write, write, write. My aim right now is more about consistency than quantity, and I'm making it my goal to average at least 3.3 pages a day.

One other thing I did to help me was that last night I took a page from Debbie's book and spent some time with index cards. I wrote out the next chapters for Oracle with one to a card. I don't have too many yet, but it's a start. On each card, I wrote a couple notes about what happens, making it clear which POV that chapter should be in, and then I wrote a note titled "Main Conflict" and things like "Sedge wants..., but..." to help me focus on having tension in each chapter.

Writing out the cards was interesting and helpful. I'm curious to see what writing pages with them will be like.

The Race Plan

The two-month writing race starts on Tuesday, and it's going to be a doozy. So, I need a game plan. Namely, I need to figure out what I'm going to write.

Key parts of the figuring:
1. It's a writing contest, not a re-writing contest, so edits don't count for word count, which means
2. My original plan to be working on revising my old Oracle material right now won't fit, but
3. I'm going to need a CWC submission during the contest and I'm really wanting to make progress on Oracle and not just sideline it in favor of a new project, so
4. I've decided to continue with the blind re-write, but
5. This is going to be a marathon race, not a sprint, and sometimes I get stuck. If all I'm working on is Oracle, running into a road block means game-over, so
6. I spent a lot of time over the past two days coming up with and developing an idea for a new novel to start on if Oracle stumps me, therefore
7. I've got a plan.

I'm going to keep on keeping on with Oracle without going back to the pages I originally wrote, and I'm working on my project B if I get stumped. Doing a blind rewrite on a whole novel is not something I'd ever have planned on, but it seems my best option right now. While I could just dive into project B for the contest, and submit it for my CWC obligation, it seems like cheating to me and it's been so long since my first try at Oracle that I'd really like to get it done instead of shelving it again.

I am totally intimidated by a two-month long contest, and I have no idea how this is going to go. But, I know that I'll get some pages written and, however it goes down, it should certainly prove interesting. Whether or not I'll cry remains to be seen, though I know Jenny's hoping for tears, that meanie.

Lots and Lots and Lots

The past few days I've been on a polymer clay bender. Goodbye kitchen table, hello beads, beads, and more beads. Whew.

Then, Jenny goes and decides that to help her meet her goal of writing 200 pages in two months, she's putting out a challenge. A two month writing race is intimidating, the two I've done before have both been more like two weeks, but, let's face it, I'm too hard headed to back away. Jenny put out the challenge, John jumped on it, and, after trying to talk myself out of it, I'm throwing my hat in the ring too.

Goodbye polymer bender, hello writing bender.

If it isn't one thing, it's the other. At least now I've got a ready-made challenge for myself for June.

Homework

In order to keep from over-reaching this month, I'm keeping things simple. The CWC crew has been assigned homework for the next meeting: expand one of the writing prompt responses into a whole story. For May, I'm going to make that my primary goal.

There's something about writing when other people are expecting results that helps to motivate me. It's an accountability thing. If I don't get my story done, the CWC crew will give me a hard time. If I don't get other things done, well, they just don't get done. Yes, I have to have 50 pages for the gang when my turn's up, but it doesn't automatically have to be 50 pages of anything specific. Anyhow, having the clear expectation and clear deadline is a good kick in the pants for me.

I'd challenge you to do something similar this month. Find someone who knows your writing and ask if they'd be kind enough to give you homework. It can be anything you want, but I'd recommend some kind of writing exercise instead of something that specifically relates to your current work in progress - this is more about shaking up your routine than just getting a few more pages written.

Alternately, I'd love to get some audience participation here. I had so much fun with the writing prompts at the meeting that I'm wondering what you think of writing prompts/exercises. Do you like them? Are there any in particular that you can tell me about? I'd love to hear about any that you've found especially fun, challenging, or productive.

Cheers all, and happy Cinco de Mayo!