You Asked For (Most of) It

September 18, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

Kitchen table seems to be my default workspace as of late, and, one week after my return from CT Fiction Fest, the normal routine is inching back into place. Since the normal routine includes candles, tea, books, pens, and paper, this is a very good thing. It also means I do the book writing thing, now equipped with my snazzy new tools gleaned from abovementioned conference.

Starting off a little differently this week, though (and not only because Monday’s entry is coming to you on Tuesday,) with answers to a few asks I’ve had in ye olde emaile inboxxe.

First, my planners. If you’re new, spoiler alert: I love planners. If you’ve been here a while, this is not news. For those who asked about my current system, I use the traveler’s notebook setup, aka one cover, holding four notebook inserts inside it.

Webster’s Pages classic and pocket traveler’s notebook covers

My classic (aka A5) cover is blush stripe, and the pocket size is blush. I am very into blush pink at the moment (it will probably be a very long moment) which is why I had to have the blush pink Artist Loft dot grid journal from Michaels. This is where I make my monthly and weekly spreads. I used to make daily spreads as well, but A) that takes a while, and B) my dailies migrated to a whiteboard on the refrigerator, and seem happy there, so who am I to move them? I’m experimenting with a minimalistic style in this planner, which is new for me, but fits with the blush, so it may stick.

My calendars are in Dutch, because I am learning.

Inserts for both covers are usually Moleskine cahiers or Volants, but Picadilly has some super nice A5 inserts, as well. I get both brands at Barnes and Noble. My new discovery is Yellow Paper House, on the website or Etsy, which makes gorgeous inserts with colored paper. Insert heart eyes emoji here. My favorite pens could take up another post all by themselves, but, for daily use, I like Pilot Frixion erasable pens and pastel highlighters (also erasable.) I like the clicky ones best. I am not receiving any compensation from abovementioned brands; merely fangirling over my favorites. This weekend, I plan to try my hand at making my own inserts, because A) I am a control freak, and B) I like pretty notebooks that do exactly as I want.

The next request comes from a conversation with friends, this past weekend, and the idea of top five books. This is a hard question for many readers, because how do you pick? Going with top five for right now, not of all time, and I can write more, later, in depth, about said choices, but, for today, my top five historical romance novels are:

Top five YA novels, right now, are:

I could probably break this down further, to give lists of specific kinds of historical romances, or YAs, and favorites that don’t fall into either category. (Nick Hornby, Evelyn Waugh, and (the real) V.C. Andrews, I am looking at you.) These will probably crop up in future posts, because A) instant post topic, on days when my blogging idea bank consists of “uhhh….” B) I will get to make a separate notebook to keep track of all of these lists, and C) I honestly could blabber about my favorite books forever. Ditto on the pens and notebooks, but a gal’s got to write sometime.

I am also putting a mental sticky note on the topic of abandoned notebooks, those that I started with the best of intentions and then…umm…yeahhh…:shoves stack of notebooks under bed, with foot: Some of them come back, as with Big Daddy Precious, aka the second from the bottom in the book stack, pictured. I fell in love with this notebook on sight, needed it, longed for it, and knew that I wanted to use it for Her Last First Kiss stuff. I started at it for longer than I would care to admit, then tried a bunch of different approaches, all of which fell completely flat.

Still, I packed it in with my must-haves when we moved, and, this past week, hauled it out of its box, when N and I gave ourselves homework to get ourselves back on track with the manuscripts we loved, but had been ignoring/hiding from/procrastinating. What better book than the one I can swear is giving me the side-eye? I hadn’t noticed it at the time, but the point in this notebook where I paused writing in it? Dead middle. Solution? One page break, new title page, begin as if this was a brand new notebook.

The one thing I have learned from these notebooks abandoned in midstream is that whatever I was using them for, and then abandoned, wasn’t the right thing. Maybe I thought it was the right thing, but it wasn’t, and that’s normal and natural, does not mean I am a failure as a writer and/or human being. All it means is that I need to turn a fresh page and try something that is not what was giving me guff. Decent advice for most things, really. I may need to make an art journal page about that.

The Fine Art of Self-bribery

September 13, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

Post-conference letdown is most certainly a thing. The change from spending an entire weekend amongst others of one’s kind, where writing, publishing, and promotion are the topics of the day, to quizzing one’s family on the location of garbage bags, and other domestic matters, is a big one. Sometimes, it takes a while. Sometimes, it takes more than that.

There is, of course, the physical reserves that need to be replenished. In other words, sleep. There needs to be some. The change from hotel bed, to home bed, may be an improvement, or it may be not an improvement. Kind of a crapshoot with that one, but at least home has the familiarity of home. On the down side, family members have still not consented to put mints on my pillow. Not that the hotel I stayed at did that either, but sometimes, it’s nice to have the gesture.

There’s unpacking, which usually includes laundry. I may get unicorn points for actually liking the whole laundry process, but that may also be because laundry time = reading time. This may count in the self-bribery category, an I am more than okay with that.

Getting back into the swing of things, after a conference, for me, involves a good deal of self-bribery. It’s very rare to come back from a conference as exactly the same writer one was when one went to said conference, and, along with swag, new friends, and possible free books, a writer generally comes back from a conference with new ideas and things they want to try. Do these things always fit into the category of business as usual? Not by a long shot.

Yesterday, my goal was to write this blog entry after I got home from breakfast with N. I’d attended CT Fiction Fest, and she’d been at an all-day event with our home chapter, Capitol Region Romance Writers. Naturally, this meant that we had to compare notes. Which led to giving ourselves homework. Which meant, for me, that a trip to nearby retailers, for new office supplies. To be fair, pretty much everything is a call for new office supplies for me, so this is not as big a deal as it may be for others. Even so, the pull of playing with new pens and/or paper and/or organizing the papers I already have are enough of an incentive to get me to actually do the same stuff that was haaaaarrrrrd before the conference (or not related to a conference. I always want to go get new pens, etc.)

As a result of this venture, my everyday carry pens and highlighters are all the same brand, Pilot Frixion. As much as I love the Pentel RSVP pens, and will still use them in other capacities, A) I did not have one in green, and B) my green Marvy LePen was mostly in there for sentimental reasons, anyway. It will go into a shadowbox, with related items, later. Now, my EDC pen case is a lean, mean, writing machine. Also, an erasable one, which is extremely useful for a perfectionist, marching herself resolutely back into a draft.

Sitting across from a critique/accountability partner and coming to terms that it is high time to get back to one’s current ms in one’s favorite genre, even when the room seems to get a little smaller, and lungs get a little bit squeezy at the thought of maybe not being able to do the thing one loves, as well as one would like. Especially when the word, “homework,” comes into play.

There’s the thing, though. Homework, especially homework that involves writing in longhand, means that it needs the proper supplies. It’s going to need paper. It’s going to need pens. Highlighters, maybe. A folder or notebook, definitely. “Shopping” from my own stash, and picking out the supplies that volunteer as tribute, is as fun as purchasing new stuff, so it’s not all about the shopping.

It’s about the focus. It’s about the commitment. It’s about honoring the story and the characters, and wanting to get myself in the very best position to see this through to the end.

So, today, I lay out the pens and highlighters all from the same maker. I checked to see if the laptop cord will reach from the kitchen table, to a power strip on a nearby wall. Spoiler: it does., I will test the Mac Book and desktop later. The thought of happy back and happy eyeballs at the same time, with the added bonus of not having to scramble to my feet, is a powerful draw. So is the chance to practice drawing (pun intended) once I have my writing goals for the day, met.

There is a new scented candle on the table now, pine, to hint of the seasons soon to begin, and a fresh cup of tea, to warm body and soul. My planners (yes, plural) are nearby, so I can have visible evidence of tasks accomplished, and a clear outline of where I need to go, to get to where I want to be. The seasonal Windows theme is new to me, and it’s fun, as well as helping to set the mood. I’m not at the point, yet, where I want a different theme, depending on the project I’m working on at the moment, but that could be a reward, trying stuff out, in that manner, for doing some of the eat the frog stuff that is also on my list.

Making up stories, and polishing the rough stuff, that’s the fun part. Poking around in electronic guts, or hauling a desktop around the common room, eh, not so much, but, if I do those things, it makes doing the fun stuff all that much easier/more efficient. The instructions for the printer are right there, on top of the box. Get that in place, and I can print pages. When I can print pages, I can three-hole-punch them. When I three-hole-punch them, I can put them in a binder. When I put them in a binder, I can see the manuscript grow, as I print out the fruit of each new session. Carrot and stick; it works for me.

Typing With Wet Claws: CT Fiction Fest Edition

September 7, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another very special Typing With Wet Claws, coming to you direct from Camp Grandma. Today is a very exciting day. because today is the first day of Connecticut Fiction Fest, where Anty and Anty Melva will be presenting their workshop. Their workshop will be at ten AM on Sunday, but today is the day Anty packs her things, and hits the road. First, she and Mama will drive to where Anty Melva Lives. Then Mama will come to Camp Grandma, to spend the weekend with me, and Anty will go, with Anty Melva, to Fiction Fest. If you are going to be there, make sure to say hi. Anty loves this whole networking thing.

The other reason today is exciting is because it is the day I will get my laser pointer. I am a little worried, because this particular laser pointer is also a pen, so Anty will naturally be drawn to it (pun unintended, but it can stay) but if I have fun with it, and Anty can see that, she will probably let me have it. Probably. I like playing with people more than I like playing with toys, and this is a toy Grandma should be able to handle. Anty wants to make sure I get enough exercise, and playing is the way indoor kitties like me do that.

Because the rule here is that I cannot talk about anything else (which is usually Anty’s writing anyway) let’s get to that. First, as always, Anty was at Buried Under Romance on Saturday. This week, she talked about the worst thing about great books. Can you guess what it is? That post is here, and it looks like this:

the struggle is real

Next, we come to Anty’s Goodreads challenge. Sebastian has spent most of the week in a sunbeam (to be honest, I probably would have done the same thing myself, so somebody still has to add a few dates and reviews, but, at current writing, Anty is now eighty percent of the way to her goal of reading ninety books this year. That means she has read seventy-two books, so far, and is eleven books ahead of schedule. Anty is a reading machine. Keep going, Anty. You’ve got this.

The favorite book that Anty read this week is A Map For Wrecked Girls. by Jessica Taylor. Anty loves desert island stories, shipwreck stories, and stories about friendship loss (and maybe healing) and this story has all of those things. Anty’s review of this book is here, and it looks like this:

Anty knows very well that she will probably come home with a, um, boatload of books from the conference. Probably. She has never been to this conference before, so maybe they do things differently on that front. I know Anty, though. Anyway, even though Anty is headed to what is basically Writer Disneyland, where A) she will be busy talking to other writers most of the time, and B) there may very well be books that people just give her, she is still bringing her Kindle, and probably a library book as well. I know my Anty. She is not going anywhere without reading material.

Anty is also not going anywhere without her planners. That is right, I used the plural. Besides Big Pink (who has a new cover; Anty will show you that later) she is bringing Li’l Pink, who has new inserts. Those inserts do not include the insert Anty made from scratch, because there is a very good reason why making traveler’s notebook inserts by candlelight is not a thing. That reason is because candlelight, while pretty, does not allow for a clear view of the colors a human is using. That is why Anty picked paper that she thought was pink, was actually neon orange. Faded neon orange, but still orange. Orange is not the new pink.

Good first try, Anty. As Miss H said, when Anty mentioned wanting to try a new creative thing, “go for it. First you’ll suck, then you’ll get better.” Miss H is pretty smart. She also recommended that Anty watch a movie called Black Panther, when Anty comes home from the conference. With a title like that, I am going to assume that this movie is about cats. I could say a lot about the need for feline representation in Hollywood, but that is for another post. Maybe if they need a sequel, Brown Tabby would be a catchy title. I cannot say it rolls off my tongue, because my tongue has bristles, because I am a kitty, but I think it’s a title that would appeal to a wide audience.

Now it is time for Anty to get packing, so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Typing With Wet Claws: Fiction Fest Prep Edition

August 31, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another very special Feline Friday, coming to you from Camp Grandma. This time, next week, Anty will be on her way to Connecticut Fiction Fest, where she and Anty Melva get to give their workshop, on writing through real life plot twists. Since Mama will be handing Anty off to Anty Melva, there is a good chance that Anty will get a chance to see me, on this visit. Probably on the way back, but I am not going to complain. Any visit is a good visit (except for vet visits) and, besides, she owes me a laser pointer.

Although Sebastian has not yet updated Anty’s Coming Soon page, there is news. Both anthologies are now available for purchase.

New York’s Emerging Writers: an Anthology of Nonfiction is available here. That is where you can read Anty’s essay, “Greetings From Boxville.”

If it is fiction you are after, you can read “Ravenwood,” the first two scenes from Anty’s novel, A Heart Most Errant, is available here, in New York’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Fiction. If you like this excerpt, and would like to read the whole book, please consider telling that to the publisher humans.

Now, on to where you can find Anty’s writing on the interwebs, this week (other than here, because, well, you already know how to get here, if you are already here, so you do not need me to tell you.) As always, Anty was at Buried Under Romance on Saturday, talking about when reading is slow, and when it is fast. That post is here, and it looks like this:

Speaking of reading, it is time to look at Anty’s Goodreads Challenge. It is not even September, but Anty would have to do some serious slacking to fall off course now, as she has read seventy-one books, out of her goal of ninety, which puts her at seventy-nine percent of the way to her goal, and twelve books ahead of schedule. Good job, Anty. Keep reading.

The book Anty liked best this week was The Love Slave, by Bertrice Small. Anty said I should mention that it is a very, very grownups-only book, with very mature themes, and younger readers, or gentle readers of any age, may want to read a different book. Anty’s review is here, and it looks like this:

Some of you may have noticed that Anty did not blog on Wednesday. That is because it was too hot in NY, and she was not feeling well. It is cooler now, and she is much better, and she acknowledges that she owes you a blog entry. She is thinking of sneaking in some updates from Fiction Fest, but that will depend on the wifi connection, and whether or not she can fix her new laptop. No big surprise, because Anty has been dubbed the computer killer.

The laptop is not dead, though. It is only doing the three beeps thing, so Anty is watching some YouTube videos of how to fix the problem at home, and then she will ask Mama to borrow a baby screwdriver, and give it a go. Anty already has figured out how she will keep all of the tiny screws straight (they are not all the same size) – she will divide a piece of paper into sections, and put each screw in its proper section, that matches where it is on the actual computer. This is where it comes in handy to be a planning sort of person.

Planning also has a dark side, though. Anty found that out this week. Even when Anty does not feel well in the heat, and does not have a lot of energy, she still has enough energy to look at her notebooks. Last weekend, Anty finally got the blush stripe cover for Big Pink, that she has been drooling over (not literally; that would be gross) for a really long time, but was hesitant to move into it, because it wasn’t exactly perfect.

That, as you might imagine, was what inspired Anty to rip all of the inserts out of the old cover (that was not very old at all; she will now use it to protect trade size paperbacks when she reads away from home) and put them into the new one. Only, she did not put all of them into the new cover. That is because the hardcover Moleskine did not fit the new cover. That was rather upsetting, because Anty liked having the hardcover Moleskine in there, but she can buy a new cahier insert, to do the same job. She needs to get more inserts anyway, since she had filled one of them.

Anty also figured out why she could not settle on how she wanted to use the inserts she had set up in Li’l Pink. That was because Li’l Pink is, well, pink, and the inserts are in shades of blue . She’d been wanting (and still wants) to move to Li’l Pink for her everyday carry, and, while the blue inserts are very pretty, they might not be the easiest to read important information on; Anty wants pink or ivory pages for that, but she wants to use the blue pages for reading and writing things.

The same company that sells Big and Li’l Pink, also has a teal (teal is a greenish-blue color, that is very pretty) cover, that is on sale at the same store where Anty got the pink covers. Her current plan is to go to the store, get the teal cover, and put the blue inserts in that one. Then, (or maybe before; I have not seen her schedule for the evening) she will either buy new inserts for Li’l Pink (Moleskine makes a pastel assortment, that Anty likes, or Kraft paper covers are good, too) or she will find a pack of three pocket sized inserts that have pink covers, that are packed away in storage.

Thankfully, Anty was pretty hardcore about labeling the boxes that came from her office, so it should not be too hard to find the box of inserts. She might even share some of them with Mama, because she has lured Mama over to the dark side, and now Mama has a notebook cover of her own. I do not have my own planner, so far, but pocket size is also kitty size, so maybe it is in my future.

That is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Typing With Wet Claws: Remote Planning Edition

July 20, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday, straight from Camp Grandma. The humans have been talking more about moving things, so I take this as an encouraging sign. I like Grandma fine, but we cats are creatures of habit, an my people are Anty, Uncle, and Mama. That is how it works. I am a very social girl, and Grandma has things to do, so I am not able to follow her everywhere, as I would like. While that does give me more time for remote-accessing my mews duties, it is still nice to have somebody to talk to me and tell me I am pretty. I mean, Grandma does, but not all day.

Anyway, before I talk about anything else, I first have to talk about where to find Anty’s writings on the interwebs. As always, she was at Buried Under Romance on Saturday. That post is full of drama. Exhaustion. A traffic stop. Romance novels. You know you want to read it. Well, you can. It is here, and looks like this:

Um. Well. There is actually no featured picture there. That is unlike Anty. The only possible explanation is that Anty delegated that task to Sebastian, who napped through the whole thing. My utmost apologies. Anty will be more on her game next week. Sebastian may want to step things up before his performance review.

I will give him this much: his window game is unbeatable. As for keeping track of Anty’s Goodreads reading challenge, eh, not so much. Anty is holding steady, though, at ten books ahead of schedule, so that is pretty good. Anty’s favorite book she read this past week is You Know Where to Find Me, by Rachel Cohn. Anty has read books where Miss Rachel collaborated with one of Anty’s all time favorite authors, David Levithan, but she had never read a book by Miss Rachel alone, without Mr. David. This was her week to fix that. How did that turn out? Her review is here, and it looks like this:

Most of Anty’s writing time this past week has been focused on Chasing Prince Charming. Anty Melva loved Anty’s scene, Anty loved Anty Melva’s editing, and they both agreed the book needed one more scene from Anty. Anty has written two drafts in longhand, and will be transcribing that second draft today, so that it can be really done-done, and then Anty Melva can start sending it out again. Then they go back to work on Drama King, which will probably go much faster, because now they know how they write a book together, and do not have to figure it out so much. Also, there is a cat in that book, which automatically makes it better. I will, of course, be on hand to serve as feline consultant.

This week Anty started a new planner for her writing, and, so far, it is going pretty good. She is still working out exactly what will go in it, and how she wants to track progress on specific projects (also, whether or not she wants to NaNo in November) but having things in one place, where she can see them, is a big help.

Anty will share more pictures as things progress. Right now, she has her Tuesday breakfasts with Miss N already blocked out, and the days that she (and I) blog, so that we do not miss any. Writing blogs in advance takes way from the “aaaaah, time to post, and I have no ideas” factor, by a lot. Anty was also able to block out the right number of days for the Connecticut Fiction Fest conference, which are not two, but three.

This is a good thing, because spending three days in a hotel full of writers is better than two days. With the information in place this far ahead, Anty can plan what she wants to bring with her, and make checklists. Anty loves checklists. The conference humans are very thoughtful, and are letting the writers hunt for their own dinners at this conference, so Anty may want to scope out the hunting grounds ahead of time, or bring food that she and Anty Melva (and any friends who wander by, potentially) can have in their room. I am a big fan of eating in one’s room. I do it, even at camp. It’s pretty great.

That is about it for this week, so, until next time, I remain very truly yours,

A Tale of Three Notebooks

July 18, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

This post is totally about stationery, and it is also totally about writing. This past weekend, I picked up three notebooks, all dedicated to writing. Here’s the family photo, all three in one place:

We’ll start with the unicorn. The morning pages book I started on my friend, EC’s floor, is now full. Three pages, as soon as possible after waking, every day, no exceptions. Whatever is in my head goes onto the page. That’s the rule. Julia Cameron, who first came up with the idea of this discipline might quibble with my version, because my pages are not the exact size specified; for me, it’s all about the pretty paper. If it’s pretty, I’ll want to write on it. That’s how I roll. Seriously, who could resist these inside pages?

Gorgeous, right? Kind of like a sunrise, if one is so visually inclined. I also love that, unlike my usual choices, this book is wire bound, which means I can fold the cover back and always deal with only one page at a time. I could get used to that.

A more recent addition to my notebook arsenal is the bookend (pun intended) to the morning pages, which I call evening pages. For this one, blame Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose good morning and good night tweets popped up in my head, late one stressy night, when I desperately needed both sleep and reassurance. Evening pages are my pep talks to myself, a quick rundown of the good points of the day, and encouragement for the day to come. I started writing those in a pocket sized hardcover book, that I thought was going to be part of Li’l Pink’s arsenal, but, when I got the new book for morning pages, it felt right to get one for evening pages, as well. Also, the blue book, which I always read as “Trust Your Butt,” was on ridiculously low clearance, so I could not leave it there. No inside pages picture, because these inside pages are plain, lined, white. Nothing to see here. I actually like the idea of very plain pages to close out the day; it feels restful, so I’m going with it.

The newest member of the Pink family does not have a name yet (suggestions welcome, in the comment section) but she is replacing the orange planner, who is taking early retirement. This orange planner and I have been through a lot together. I felt pangs as I put him in his box while packing the old apartment, and was impatient to get him back when we did land in For-Now apartment. Trouble is, dude has, how shall I put this delicately, bad juju. It’s time for a fresh start.

This new, pink, planner has white pages, unusual for me, because I usually require ivory or colored, but, this time, I like the difference. Also different is the fact that the tools I wanted to use for this planner were clear from the first; I’m going minimal. Black pen, one set of pastel highlighters, only a dash of a single color per page. Very much not me, and, yet, very much me, at the same time.

The biggest difference, and by this I mean biggest, biggest, can I really pull this off, difference, is that this planner is focused, not on domestic duties, moving, or other domestic concerns, but writing. Sure, some non-writing appointments will be in there, but mainly as a way to remind me that I have to put the writing time in elsewhere. It’s a new approach for me, and somewhat scary, but exciting, too.

Future Log Pages

The first thing I put in the book was a quick calendar for the rest of the year. No spaces to write things down, just numbers in a square, so that I know what day of the week goes with what day of the month. Next is the future log section, a rundown of dates that are already spoken for, on a regular basis: weekly breakfasts with N, blog posts for this blog, and for Buried Under Romance. Plenty of space to add in other things as they arise. Since we’re coasting into the end of July, I don’t have July things on there, like Skype sessions with Melva (but will be including those, going forward) and the upcoming release of the New York’s Emerging Writers fiction anthology, but, putting it out there, Connecticut Fiction Fest is but a handful of heartbeats away. Definitely time to get my ducks in a row, for that particular pond. I have seen Melva’s PouwerPoint, and it is magnificent.

This week, she and I are putting our final-final-final touches on Chasing Prince Charming, and then back out it goes, in search of a good home. When that happens, we are taking a short break for Melva to focus on her super fun humorous nonfiction, and me to focus on Her Last First Kiss. I already hear N’s voice in my head, reminding me to set a target date for the completion of draft two, and potential markets for same. September brings Fiction Fest, and then, whammo- bammo, it’s October, season of my birthday, Halloween, the clocks rolling back to my beloved early sunsets, and then the holiday season will be upon us.

Said holiday season includes November, which has not only Thanksgiving, but regular National Novel Writing Month, and I need to start preparations now, if I want to participate. At this point, I don’t know. Is that the selkie story’s time, or do I want to have A Moment Past Midnight ready for actual Hogmanay? (That would involve me closing a few plot holes, but nothing a couple of good brainstorming sessions wouldn’t handle. Takers, pop your contact info in comments, and I will return the favor. )

It’s not possible to plan for every aspect of the writing life, but, for me, a fresh start, clear expectations, and a calendar are big steps in the right direction. Not sure yet how I am going to track progress, but I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

Fifty Shades of Blush

July 16, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

Disclaimer I: this post has nothing to do with the E. L. James book, or the movie adaptation. It does have an awful lot to do with stationery.

Disclaimer 2: The fact that my current desktop background is a picture of my old desk , which is still in storage, with a notebook on it, that is also still in storage, probably says something, but I am not probing into that right now.

Left to right: Li’l Pink, Big Pink, Artist Loft dot grid notebook, powder blue Artist Loft softcover notebook that says “Trust Your Gut,” but I will never not-read as “Trust Your Butt,” brand new traveler’s notebook with four inserts strictly for art, current paperback read, undercover. Pun intended. Front row: skull and crossbones mug, possibly the most me mug I have ever seen, at least so far.

With the lone outlier of the powder blue (but look at it, isn’t it gorgeous?) we can see that my color choices fall into two distinct camps. Black, and blush pink, in that order, will catch my eye every time. If I remove the buffer of the blue notebook, my hope is that the pink and black traveler’s notebooks will have pastel goth babies, because that would be gorgeous.

Since my first (which is also my current) evening pages book is the hardcover pocket sized notebook in Li’l Pink will be succeeded by the Trust Your Butt book (it goes beautifully with the pastel rainbow unicorn book that will succeed my current morning pages book, but that’s another post, because I am on a time crunch, and forgot to take pictures.

I’d originally wanted the pink Artist Loft book to succeed the evening pages book, because soft, powdery blush pink is classy and calm, and smells like baby powder, but it only comes, as far as I can tell, in dot grid

Well, huh. What to do, what to do? Besides get the Trust Your Butt book, that is. The last few months have been a wild ride, and my current planner, which I was excited to have when I started it, now carries a lot of, hmm, how shall we say, bad juju. While I still stood in the store, turning the pink book over in my hands, thinking of how well it fits with Big and Li’l Pink, the flicker of an idea came to me. Why not start a new planner? Clean slate, try a totally different format, dip a toe into uncharted waters.

I didn’t intend for that to tie into the selkie story, but I’ll take it. That’s another tie to something I’ve loved longer than I can remember, and, yet, something I haven’t done yet. I like that sort of balance. What if I started the new planner with the writing stuff right up front, instead of buried in the middle, after the “important” stuff? What if this planner was only for the writing?

In a way, it’s wandering around the woods at night, with buckets on my feet and oven mitts on my hand once again, but I don’t hate that kind of thing. It’s more of a fun thing, picking up the scent and following it where it leads. Where I hope it leads is to that place where instinct kicks in and I don’t have to think about what I’m doing.

Right now, my big task for the day is to get that last scene for Chasing Prince Charming polished, and lob it Melva’s way, hopefully before our Skype chat, where we get all our CPC ducks in a row. I’m at the stage where I’m looking forward to it, looking forward to when we can turn our collective attention back to Drama King, and I have space for Her Last First Kiss once again.

What does all of this have to do with a particular shade of notebook cover, which is not even my favorite-favorite? (Still number two, though; that counts for something.) Darned if I know, but I do remember my very first dance class (to be fair, I was so little that it might even have been a movement class) and the teacher (she was a smart one) color coded the kiddos as soon as we showed up for the first session. Different color leotard for everybody, and pale pink tights for all. My assigned color? Black. Maybe she knew something. Exactly what that might have been, I am not sure, but the black and blush pink seems to have stuck, and I am more than fine with that.

That’s the magic seven hundred (and change) so off I go, to put CPC’s hero through the wringer. :evil laughter trails:

Six Days and Counting

April 9, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

Six days now, until move-out day, and the pressure is most assuredly upon us. We’ll be turning in our cable box, which also takes care of our internet, on Friday, so internet access may be libraries and coffee shops for a little while. I still plan to keep as closely to the regular blog schedule as possible, but if you’re following the moving saga, and don’t already follow me on Twitter, you can do that right here.

I will admit to strong feelings when it comes to taking apart my desktop and getting it ready to move to short term storage. This means the laptop will be called back to regular duty, which means tipping it back a wee bit, because the screen goes black if I hold it upright (I have no idea why this is; machine works fine, but needs to be at an angle if I want to actually see anything.) The flip side of this will be setting up my desk in its new home, and carving out my writing space once more. Until then, the world is my office.

This is one way that being a longhand-first writer comes in handy. The notebooks I use most (see picture above) will go in a special bag that will travel with me, personally, because I am not in the mood to have these notebooks go walkabout in the moving process. Entertaining as they might be to any random person who stumbles up on them and can read my handwriting, I’d rather keep them close. I can’t speak for all writers having special relationships with their tools, but, for this writer, the answer is most definitely yes.

Case in point: this weekend, I attended a leadership meeting (say what you will about an organization that allows me to lead anything) and we were all encouraged to take notes. I did not need the offered pen or paper, because I had Big Pink, and my pen case, but I did make a troubling discovery. Said discovery being the kind that trikes terror into the heart of a notebook lover. My notes filled the last pages of my Moleskine Volant, with its perforated pages. Normally, I would swap this insert for another, but (you may want to grab onto something heavy, for support) I had already packed my inserts. All. Of. Them.

Going into a move when I do not have perforated pages is not going to work, and running out to purchase another pack of inserts is not on the schedule, but packing mode has sped up the making connections part of my brain. On that same day, I also had filled the last non-perforated page in my cahier. There was an unopened hardcover Moleskine, lined, in my bookcase-made-from-milk-crates in the living room. Move cahier to Volant’s place, put hardcover where cahier used to be, all purposes fulfilled, back to alternating between calculated confidence and running around in circles, flailing arms and screaming.

More calculated competence, when it comes to packing, and, oddly enough, in writing, as I am on track with my Camp NaNo progress. If I keep up at my current rate, I may very well finish before the end of the month, with room to spare. The story problem is a smaller one (or is it?) – get heroine back with the man she loves, and send her would-have-been second husband off into the sunset, eventually to land in a companion story. We’ll see how that goes.

Novel projects are on pause (or are they?) while we’re in transition, but part of packing includes digging up bones. One of these bones comes in a navy blue binder. Said binder is not the kind with space for me to put my own cover image behind a clear film, so I had no idea what I’d find, when I opened it. What I did find yanked me firmly into novel land. In Nothing Short of Heaven, which initial version was, itself, a NaNo project (though regular or camp version, I cannot say) is, like Her Last First Kiss, set in Georgian England, and I won’t say I forgot about Slate and Melanie (because how could I?) but seeing them again, when I didn’t expect them, well that was something else.

Slate has no sense of self, while Melanie knows exactly who she is. Her theme song is “So What,” by P!nk. Her BS meter is set to zero, which serves her well, because Slate, well, he has some baggage. This book also has probably my favorite villain I’ve written so far, who prefers the title of Master to his actual name. I’m still planning on finishing the second draft of Her Last First Kiss first, but I wouldn’t mind getting reacquainted with Slate and Melanie, at all, when I’m done with this one.

Right now, I’m doing the thing in front of me -which is, apart from my nightly Camp NaNo pages, packing- and, at the same time, keeping an eye on the end goal. New apartment. Finished draft. New release. New notebook. (Hey, small perks can have big effects.) Later today, I’ll be viewing an apartment that is not only basically across the street from our current place, but the next door neighbor would be a takeout calzone restaurant. I will count that as an amenity.

Typing With Wet Claws: I Live in Boxville Edition

April 6, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, with another Feline Friday. Moving day gets even closer, and there are a lot more boxes right now. This is not high on the cat-pleasing metee, These are not the fun kind of boxes that I have heard other cats like to get into (I do not go into boxes, because I am nt big on climbing or jumping) but the kind of boxes that all of our things go into. I would say I will feel more at ease when I see things come out of those boxes, but that will mean going to a different place. I do not like different.

Yesterday, Anty and Uncle looked at an apartment they liked very much, and the human who is in charge of that gave them a paper they need to fill out to find out if they can live there. Kitties are welcome, which is good. The actual moving stuff is not so much fun, but nobody has asked me to pack anything, so far, so I am not going to complain.

Even though some things are on hiatus while Anty deals with the move, other things are not. I still have to tell readers where they can read Anty’s writing on the interwebs, besides here, because anyone reading this is already here, and Anty is still at Buried Under Romance every Saturday. This past week, she talked about reading when life gets weird. That post is here, and it looks like this:

Even though Anty’s Goodreads challenge is on hold until the dust, figurative and literal, from the move settles, she is working hard on another challenge. That challenge is her story for Camp NaNoWriMo, A Moment Past Midnight. Anty is writing this story by hand, in a special notebook, which I will show you. That notebook I this one:

cover page and notes

Anty found this leathery paper holder while packing, and it had some paper in it, but not a lot. That meant she had to go out and get more paper if she wanted to actually write something, which is this paper:

These are pages with no writing on them. It is Anty’s job to put writing on them. That is why she has a pen in the pen loop. Every night, she tells herself a new part of the story. That fills at least two pages, sometimes more. Anty plans to write at least fifty pages during this month. She has written, so far, nineteen pages, which is almost one half of the way to her goal. I think that is doing rather well. She has some notes she made about what she wants to write, but, for the most part, she is letting the story tell itself to her. There is not a lot of pressure that way. She does know where she started, and where she wants it to end, but there will be a few surprises along the way.

That is why she needs different kinds of paper, besides the regular writing paper, which is the pink paper. That other paper is part from a planner she had one or two cats ago, and part if that other paper, the other other paper, if you will, is a mini legal pad, by Punch Studio (do not worry, I did not get punched, and neither did Anty) :

The mini legal pad is very pretty, which means Anty will want to look at it more. This is where she writes down things like ideas for supporting characters that would be around her protagonists (protagonists is a fancy word that means the humans who have the most important roles in the story) or questions she needs to answer, or ideas for scenes and things like that. They are not part of the actual story, but they are important in creating the framework for it.

If you think you see a clear plastic page on the other side of the legal pad, you are right. That is also part of the old planner, as is the plastic bookmark that clips onto the rings. The plastic sheet is so that Anty always has a firm surface on which to write, no matter where she is. That will come in very handy during moving time.

So far, Anty has found that she likes writing by hand very much. She always knew this, but the fact that she does not transcribe anything yet, but goes straight to writing more pages by hand, makes this story feel different from the rest. She will see how she feels about that by the end of the month. Maybe this will be something she can carry over into future projects, and/or picking up the ones that are on hiatus.

That is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Manhattan Special, and Lessons from Sience (sic)

April 4, 2018annabowling Leave a comment

Not going to lie, today is not my favorite day. We are now ten days from moving out of this apartment, and we are still not one hundred percent firm on where we will be landing. Today’s packing focus is stuff that is, pardon the pun, extremely close to home. The TBR books go in boxes, naturally, and I actually want a bit of distance from this particular shelf, so that the anticipation can grow again. This is also the day that I pack my notebooks, and the art and writing magazines, and that is the part that’s bugging me the most.

Breaking down the stuff that I love and putting it away, to be replaced by empty space is not fun. I would rather be writing. I’m glad that I’m doing Camp NaNo this year, and I’m glad that I’m measuring my progress in handwritten pages. Coming to pen and paper at the end of the day is a happy place. It’s a place where I don’t feel the pressure of perfectionism weighing on me. All I’m doing is telling a story, and I love that.

Do I want this story to eventually see publication? Of course I do. I’m a writer. That’s what I do. I write. I have a white board in my office, and, right now, it has “do what you know” written on it. If the packing gets overwhelming, what do I know needs to be done? Is all I can do right now, put things that go together, together? Can do. Art magazines go with art magazines. Filled notebooks in one stack, blank ones in another, active notebooks in another, still. Bit by bit, it all comes together.

That can be difficult to see, when drowning in a sea of cardboard, packing tape that is apparently self-shredding (seriously, if anyone ever invented shred-proof packing tape, they would be a millionaire.) There are times I am convinced our stuff is breeding while we sleep. This may be true of the printer paper, which is now officially serving no purpose, as we packed the printer last night.

Where I wanted to be, short term, right now, was handing in the revised manuscript of Chasing Prince Charming (to be fair, we’re almost there, and my co-writer also needs to hit pause for a couple of weeks) and forging ahead on Drama King, while bringing the second draft of Her Last First Kiss to fruition. That will still happen, only not on my schedule. I am not looking beyond each individual day’s writing for A Moment Past Midnight, though I do have to admit I am falling in love with the guy who does not get the girl, and very much look forward to finding the love of his life in another story. I don’t normally think in linked stories, but at least one more, maybe two more stories, were part of the plan for AMPM from the outset, so we will see where this goes.

Where I wanted to be, long term, was farther along in my career. Print books. Glossy covers. Matte covers, for that matter. Actual, physical books to sign. Again, that cans still happen, and, with consistent work, it will, but, right now, it’s all cardboard and packing tape and Sharpie fumes, and the occasional emotional time bomb as I rip into the odd couple of boxes that never got unpacked from the last move.

vintage notebook – score!

My handwriting identifies this notebook as dedicated to “sience” (sic.) It was only missing a few pages, and the rest are blank. Considering my grades in science classes over the years, this does not surprise me. Ironically, spelling was always one of my better subjects. This is probably going in the box of unused notebooks, because I A) want to keep my box of active notebooks light, and B) the pages are regular white, with blue lines, and I don’t normally use that type of paper.

Still, there’s a connection. By the single doodle I found inside, I suspect I was ten when I took “sience.” Our family, then my dad, my mom, two dogs, one hamster, and me, moved that year, as well. I wasn’t too thrilled about that move, either, and remember an impassioned plea to be allowed to live on my best friend’s couch (spoiler alert: it did not work. Even though friend was fine with it, none of the parents were on board) the move still happened.

Today is gray and rainy, which is good writing weather. Is it good packing weather? That depends on how fond one is of the scent of damp cardboard, but I think we’ll manage. When I get into the packing groove, there’s a phase when I hit autopilot, the question of what goes where answers itself, and the people who live in my head (aka characters) get downright chatty. That part, I like. It’s not so much “writing” as it is “story,” and it builds a foundation I can build on when the dust (literal and figurative) settles.

In the meantime, these boxes aren’t going to pack themselves, and I’ve got some NaNo pages to write tonight. Totally pantsing this one, which is an adventure, but that’s for another post.

Typing With Wet Nails

for the love of romance

Notebooks