writing

This Time, It’s The N

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It’s not a race. It’s finding your voice. You’re okay. Now get off that ledge, give yourself a day off, feed your soul with something that brings you joy and sit back down from a place of peace. You’re a writer. You’re fine. You have all the time in the world.
-Beth Treadway

Well, I knew it had to happen sometime. We have had the first casualty, or should I say, sign of wear, on the new external keyboard. The bottom part of the N, I noticed as I sat down for the morning’s session, is not as there as it used to be.  I take that as a source of pride. I’ve been pounding keys enough to wear away letters on this new keyboard. As I started typing this entry, I noticed that the L is looking shaky on the bottom as well. Not too shabby, getting those letters, well, um, shabby.

Wearing the letters off keys may be the computer equivalent of emptying pens, which I have also been doing. I’d say filling notebooks as well, but maybe that’s more like using up memory with accumulated files. Maybe? Maybe not? I’m not sure that everything translates like that, but that’s not where I’m putting my mental energy these days.

The first part of this week was consumed by domestic tornadoes of the sort that make one exclaim, “Really, life? Really?” Along with a few other strong words.  Second half of the week looks better, with a new opportunity that may be in the offing, but let’s get back to the first part, which fits very well with today’s quote.  There are going to be times in every writer’s life when the world goes crazy. That’s not an if, that’s a when, and it’s going to happen to everybody. Accepting that makes it easier to handle, I’ve found.

The last few years, the last year, and the last couple of days have made me realize how much a part of me writing actually is. It’s been a dedicated search to find my voice again, and find the process that works for the writer and the person I am now. There’s some wandering around in the woods still, but there are trail markers, and those are all worthy of celebration. It’s not a race (unless there’s a deadline, but that’s a good thing) and it’s okay to take the time to do it right.

Head down, eyes on my own paper. I got this. I know how to write a book. I know how to write a romance novel. I may not have a muse, but I do have a magpie, and she is happily gathering shiny things; books and movies and songs and scents and flashes of scenes and I am getting all of this down. Emptying pens. Filling notebooks. Rubbing the letters off computer keys.  Putting story where there was no story before. That’s progress.

The bottom bar of that L key is going down.

Typing With Wet Claws: Explaining the Writer Brain Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday.

The humans say the new year is now underway, but it has been for the last week or so, so I think they need to pay better attention to their calendars. Anyway, this week has been cold. Thankfully, I have a built in full length fur coat, and I am an indoor kitty, so I did not have to go outside. My humans did, every day, and they were not always happy about it, but they are happy to come home to a warm apartment, and, of course, to me.

i1035 FW1.1

One good thing about  the weather being this cold and sometimes snowy is that it inspires Anty to hunker down and get some writing done.  This is what her current desktop screen looks like. She picked this picture because it is very similiar to the cover of the calendar on the wall of her office, but will probably change the desktop a few times before she finds something that feels really right. The important thing here was to put the Christmas desktop away until it is Christmas again. She is always a little sad to see her favorite time of the year come to an end, but it is my job to remind her that this means the start of a new year, and Valentine’s Day is coming very soon. Valentine’s day is a very important day for romance writers.

Also important is when Anty has a new post at Heroes and Heartbreakers, and this Monday, she did. She is very glad this was her week to recap Sleepy Hollow, because a lot happened, for three different ships (I am still not sure how ships fit into this kind of show, but they do not tell kitties these things.) Her post is here and looks like this:

i1035 FW1.1

 

 

 

There have been a lot of domestic tornadoes this week, but Anty is not letting that distract her from getting ready for the new book. I can tell she is working hard at this because sometimes, she does not seem to be all there. Writers’ pets, you know what I mean. If you are not a writer’s pet (or a writer’s human) then I will explain.

Sometimes, your writer may get so deep into their book, especially when they are getting ready to make their first draft, that part of their brain will stay there, even when they are doing other things. Even when they are doing important other things, like ordering tea or making human food. Ask them a question that they should be able to answer easily, but all the answer that gets is a confused look, something that sounds like “huh?” and maybe a quick mumble before they start getting antsy (like I do before I have to, um, defend my family against the Green Chair of Evil.) At that point, it is best to accept the inevitable. Your writer has a new book brewing, and they are going to be spending a good deal of their time talking to the people who live in their heads. Anty says it is more a case of making sure the people in her head talk to her. Either way, the people in Anty’s head live several  hundred years in the past, so it makes sense that it takes her some time to get back to the rest of us. As long as she can still open the bag of treats, I am okay with that.

Anty's typical view

Anty’s typical view

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

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

The Magpie Phase

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When you feel you are on a wrong-headed path, the quickest way to get where you want to go is to turn around, head back, and start again from the point you went askew.
—William Fitzsimmons

Wise words for the start of the new year, from my newest musical crush.  Music and I tend to find each other, lately through the browse option on Spotify, which I love, and as soon as I heard “From the Water,” I knew I had found something to add to my magpie hoard for Her Last First Kiss.  I could go on about the intoxicating melodies, the raw emotion conveyed in poetic prhasing (how could I not love a singer/songwriter who can correctly and effectively use “soylent” and “picayune” in the same song?)

It’s a brand new year, this 2015, time to forge ahead and trust that I know how to do this writing-a-book thing. I’ve done it before. I can do it again, and the other stuff of life is going to have to get in line. I’m still not talking much about Her Last First Kiss (aka HLFK) at this point, because I am, contrary to my expectations (a favorite Dutch proverb states, “Man plans, God laughs.” Another favorite in that category says, “Pray to God and row toward shore,” which is also appropriate.) There are times when a story will look the writer square in the eye and say “I am more than what you think I am.” To which the writer often responds with something along the lines of nervous laughter, shifty eyes, and frantically sifting through notes because this thing was going to be all planned out, and…oh, very well.

The magpie stage is like preparing the nursery for a new baby. We’re going to need to babyproof everything, get a crib with sides that will both stay up and come down easily when needed, string up the mobile to keep baby occupied, because that rapidly growing brain is not  “doing nothing” while the kid is so young that it looks like all they are doing is lying there.  They’re doing tons, but since they don’t have language yet, they can’t tell us.  With books-in-the-making, this is the time for gathering all the stuff the writer is going to need to make this thing happen.

Notebooks and pens, yes. New file, sure. Scrivener and I basically stare at each other, as I’m still figuring that out, but one of the things I have learned from my NaNot this year is that I need to put the mechanics aside for a while. Feel the story. Know the story. Know how it feels, because I write romance. This is all about the heart, the broken, bleeding, barely beating hearts of two people who are absolutley convinced that love is not for them, because they’re too far gone. They are wrong, of course, and I can promise them a happily ever after at the end of the book. Between Once Upon a Time, and Happily Ever After, though, anything can happen. I do know what happens, but what happens isn’t enough.

How does it feel for each of them as they go through their lives? These aren’t plot points to them; to my story people (it doesn’t seem right to call them characters) this is their lives. My  hero, who really, truly, honestly believes there is nothing about  him that matters besides amusing others with his failures. My heroine, who really, truly, honestly believes there is no room in her life for joy, because she must give all to duty. They’re wrong, of course, and I can prove that, not only with the culmination of their story, which I know already, but with all the steps that lead up to it.

In this, my magpie stage, I flit about, collecting all the bright and sparkly things for this story’s nest. Historical background, yes, but here’s the thing – they don’t know they’re historical characters. The late eighteenth century is their now.  As for me, I’m here, so I have a few centuries more of resources, and even if they don’t know who Mary Chapin Carpenter or Rainbow Rowell  or William Fitzsimmons are, those creators have had a hand in stirring this pudding.

I’m reading like crazy, more outside historical romance than I had thought I would for this book, though HLFK is definitely that genre, but that deep-down heart trauma, I am going to take that wherever I can find it and let it soak into my marrow.  Dangit, this hero and heroine deserve that. They deserve everything I can give them and more. I am honored that they picked me, that they are letting me feel them, not merely acknowledge that they exist.  I am watching movies as diverse as The Smurfs (1 and 2) and Diner and Shutter Island and episodes of TV shows I’ve loved for years, and those I’ve never seen before, because there is a spark of something I can pluck from that and add to my toolbox.  There will be a Pinterest board, which will be secret, because I need current project boards to be secret; I’m surprised at that, but it’s one of the things I’ve learned about my own process, and that’s okay.

Chattering, too, as magpies do, when time and context are right.  Still learning the right balance on that one, but I do know that talking is a part of my process, which is a living thing. I’m looking forward to this new adventure 2015 will bring.

Time, Place, and Billy Joel

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‎If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time.
– Billy Joel

Welp, ten days until Christmas, and I am nowhere near ready.  This surprises me. Christmas has been my favorite holiday since I was but a wee sprog, even more as an adult than as a kid, and, normally, I am in a constant Christmas frenzy from the moment I get up from Thanksgiving dinner.  This year, well, it’s snuck up on me. I’m not sure how that happened.

I’m not sure, for that matter, if it matters how it happened. Fact is that it did, I have ten days until The Day and all I can do is make the best out of what i have. Today’s quote is from Billy Joel, one of my all time favorite musicians, and I’m going to count him as a favorite writer as well, because “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” is a whole story of everyday genius, and there’s “Captain Jack” and he managed to evoke emotion in “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” which is comprised entirely of name dropping 20th century names, events and places. So yes, one of my favorite writers right there, as writers come in all flavors.

One of the reasons I love Billy Joel’s writing (and music) is that it is intrinsically tied to his voice. First few notes of “Piano Man,” and you’re there, in the bar, breathing the stale smoke and watching the regular crowd shuffle in and do their thing, again and again, day after day, while simultaneously inside the piano player who knows this can’t be his end point. It has to be only a stop along the way. (Pause here a moment to appreciate the storytelling mastery of “Stop in Nevada.“)  It’s a very specific place, and  yet a very universal feeling, and I think that’s why it resonates as much as it does with me.

I’m all about the emotional connection, which is probably a good thing since I write romance, and since I write historical romance, the connection to a time and place is also important. There’s a world of difference between Georgian England and modern day NY, but the same desire, to be known and accepted for the person one already is, that’s timeless. So, all in all, I’m in the right genre, and that’s a good thing to know.

This past Saturday, I sat in a room full of other romance writers and listened to the fabulous Marie Lark share her method of plotting via character motivation (which also works for pantsers. I think I’m somewhere in the middle, but not doing labels at this time.)  Where I’d come into the meeting wondering if I wasn’t off the mark with something regarding the new historical that I oh so greatly love but still didn’t quite grasp yet, by the time we were only a few minutes into the workshop, my characters, once reticent, were blabbering at me faster than I could write.

One of the things I found I tended to do during my wandering around in the woods years was focus so much on the plot that the characters faded. That’s not what I love. What I love is the characters driving the whole story, their needs and wants (especially when the needs and wants are two different things) taking me where we all need to go. This workshop was a great reminder of that, and exactly on time.

Which will be the same with my favorite season of the year. Play some Christmas music. Play some Billy. Write some story. Bake some cookies. Let the lights shine. Prepare the traditional Christmas zombie hand and dangle an ornament from its fingers. My mother used to say, “the more you do, the more you’ll want to do,” and she’s right. The Monday blog post is already up on Monday, I baked brownies, and story things are going to happen. Tree is decorated, gifts are in their process of being created and distributed, and far better to embrace the season with ten days left to The Day than turn Grinchy and let it slip by me completely. Besides, in our family, the twelve days of Christmas start on the 25th, so adding that all in, I’ve got oodles of time. Now where did I put those candy canes?

 

Tools of the Trade

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The more I tried to force it, the less it worked, until in the end I hit a wall of creative exhaustion.
–Julia Ross

Today’s quote comes from this post by author Julia Ross, whom I am afraid to read. Not that I don’t want to; I have several of her books (alas, in storage, but there’s the library and ebooks, so not an excuse there) and I’ve peeked into them and closed the covers and put them back on the touch with a reverent pet. I’m sure I’m going to love these books when I do read  them, but the giant question mark hanging over the possibility of there being more books from this author in the near or far future -her post was written in 2007, after all, about when my own wandering in the woods started, would require me to read them through splayed fingers. What if I love her and there aren’t any more, ever?

It’s happened before. I love, love, love Valerie Sherwood, aka Jeanne Hines, aka Rosamund Royal, one of the first wave of historical romance writers in the late seventies and early eighties. Grand adventures, bold heroines, intriguing heroes, vivid historical detail, heartfelt author’s notes, etcetera, etcetera. Most readers have those authors who get an “oh, yes!” from the very first page and never want the stream to stop. Sometimes, however, it does. After Ms. Sherwood’s last published work, Lisbon, she let fans know she was going to spend as much time as she could with her beloved husband, Eddie, who had fallen ill. She never came back. I can’t blame her. The illness of a spouse can overshadow everything else, and I can’t even imagine the impact a loss would have. When authors disappear for reasons like this, we understand. We don’t blame them.

The sort of creative paralyisis that affects writers in Ms. Ross’s situation, that I understand all too well. Those ideas that should work, but don’t, the yen to try something new but still stay true to who we are as writers, the shifting demands of the market, all of those together, compounded with the desire not to let people down, that’s a lot of balls (and sometimes chainsaws) to juggle at one time. There’s guilt. Frustration. Downright shame. This should work. It worked for Big Name Author. It worked for Writer Friend. It worked for Critique Partner. Why doesn’ t it work for meeeeeeee? Well, because it doesn’t.

(Makeup) case in point: today’s picture. This is part of my daily routine. I love makeup. I love makeup like I love historical romance. I’ve got Kat von D. I’ve got Wet’n’Wild. They are usually on my face at the same time. There’s primers and color correction and a pleasing balance of neutrals and brights, accumulated from a lot of trial and error. Makeup is natural for me. I like it. It’s playtime. It’s not a mask, it’s art on my face. It’s part of me. Some women don’t wear makeup. Some men do. Yay for all of us, as long as the face we see in the mirror reflects the person behind it, I’m good with that. If I were to run errands or meet friends in jeans and tshirt and no makeup, I’d feel…awkward. Uncomfortable. Not ugly, just not-me. I spent too much time being not-me to willingly go back there again.

So it is with writing. All that striving and trying and bashing my head against the keyboard and shoving what I naturally want to do into a box because “real writers” do this or do that didn’t get me anywhere good. I’ve spoken before about writer friends, however well-meaning, who think I “really should” write their favorite genre instead of my own, or what’s popular or what’s hot or the next big thing. Stop. Just stop. If I wanted to, I would. I’ve tried genres that are not-me, and know what? They’re not-me. I’m me. I wear makeup. I write romance.

Creative exhaustion is something nobody plans on, but sometimes it happens. It’s not fun. It’s frustrating and annoying and something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It does, however, have the potential to be a useful tool. It teaches us what we don’t want to do. What doesn’t work. When we know what doesn’t work, we can turn in the opposite direction and go in the other way. Forcing writing very seldom works, and if it does, it’s not the same as writing that comes from a natural place. It’s easy to say “relax, it will come” and for those in the throes of creative exhaustion, that can make the pressure seize up all the more.

I’m not an expert, by any means. I still seize up at times over the fact that my most recent novel release isn’t all that recent :runs around in circles, screaming.: Must get new novel out now now now now now! Accio manuscript! :taps foot: Nothing? Guess I’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. Which is fine, because it can be a wondrous adventure.

Fumbling Toward Storytown

annabowling 4 Comments

You should walk towards yourself as a writer, not away.
—Chuck Wendig

Writer Friends: What are you working on right now?

Me: :shifty eyes: Um, :mumble mumble: New historical :mumble mumble: Georgian. :mumble mumble: Something about a love triangle. :mumble mumble: Canada.  :mumble mumble: Hey, look, a kitty.

Even if there’s no kitty. Really, all I want is to change the subject. Current Project doesn’t want to be talked about yet. Odd for me, since extrovert me really does want to talk to Everybody about pretty much All The Things, though I’ve tried really really hard to hold myself back on that. Sometimes too much. There has to be a happy medium, and sometimes it’s tricky to find. On the other hand, there is such a thing as talking too much about a story, so much so that A) It’s all talked out and now no longer needs to be written, and/or B) there’s so much input from so many different sources that outside voices drown out the voices of the characters. In either event, nothing gets done, and the characters sit around in the author’s brain, all crabby because they were all set to have this awesome adventure and now nobody’s doing anything and what are they even here for?

Imagine various couples dressed in garb from various historical eras, drumming their fingers on various tables, sighing loudly and looking out the windows because they are sooooo booooored. Not with being historical people (except for Anthony and Christine, whom I tried to shove into a Regency setting where neither they nor I are at all  happy, because Regency sells, but my heart wasn’t in it. We’ll give this a rest and try again in a different era when they are speaking to me again.) or with being couples, but with being stuck in stories that weren’t working because I was so determined to do things the way they “should” be done that I couldn’t have shipwrecked them worse if I tried.

Can they be rescued? Sure, most of them. We need some time to let the dust settle, these would-be books and I. Others will shake hands (or bow and curtsy as the case may be) and go our separate ways, glad to have been in each other’s lives for the good times we had. Time plus distance equals perspective, and taking a step back from a story-that-won’t is often the key to making it into a story-that-will, and eventually a story-that-did.

The story I’d thought I could maybe possibly have done and dusted, at least to the halfway mark, if I did do NaNo merely laughed at me. It didn’t want to be plotted with charts or GMC’d into marching order. No, these two have banded together and want to play with me. They’ll tell me this much, but I have to figure out this other thing before they’ll say anything else, but when I do, they have something special for me. I haven’t had a hero and heroine do this to me before, but that’s kind of the whole point, having those characters find me while I’m still wandering around in the woods at night, bumping into trees and getting my foot caught in decayed logs. One of them will help me sit on some boulder I never noticed before and the other one will calmly disengage my foot from the rotted log, chase off whatever wildlife was inside said log (because there usually is) and then we’ll have a talk. They’ll tell me their story and I will write it down.

Because that’s what it’s all about for me. The hero, the heroine, their story. All the rest, word counts and GMC and plot and historical versimilitude (far better than historical accuracy, but that’s another post altogether) and character charts and all the rest, those come secondary. Listening to too many voices has resulted in the past with me stomping about in the woods at night, during a rainstorm, with both feet in rotten logs and a bucket stuck in my head, and I’m over all that, thankyouverymuch. Here’s this couple (even when they unite to make me their plaything, but I’m not minding much, really; it’s fun for me, too.) and here’s me and we’re going on an adventure. Feels about right.

Typing With Wet Claws: Traditional Christmas Zombie Edition

annabowling 3 Comments

Skye here, for another Feline Friday.  It has been an eventful week around the house for everybody. The leftovers from Thanksgiving are all gone now, except for a little bit of gravy, so I still get that nice warm birdy smell every now and again. Anty is very happy to have over three hundred followers and says she is working on something to say thank you for that.

The big change around here is Anty planning Christmas decorations for another year. That usually means lights get strung in the doorways to the living room and Uncle’s office, and the tree goes up maybe a day after that. There is some talk this year of a second tree to go in the front window, but I have not seen them bring it in yet. One tree is still good, full of lights and shiny dangly things. I do not get near the tree, since it is up on a table and I do not jump or climb, so I watch it from the floor. 
Mama got Anty a lot of new batteries, so that Anty will not be without her camera over the holiday season. I mean a lot of batteries. Like this many. This means she can chase me around the house for a long time in order to get my picture for this blog. She says it is for holiday pictures, but I know what she really means. She wants kitty pictures.

lots of batteries mean lots of pictures

lots of batteries mean lots of pictures

We also have something the humans say counts as holiday decoration, but I think they  have the wrong holiday in mind. Since I am only a kitty, I have not had a lot of Christmases, and someone may have to help me out here, but is there such a thing as a Christmas zombie? Because we have this zombie hand that Anty says is going to hold a Christmas ornament and be the centerpiece on the dining room table. It looks like this:

Traditional Christmas zombie?

Traditional Christmas zombie?

I think all that time on the glowy box is making Anty loopy. She says she has her head down and her eyes on her own paper. She has big purple headphones on so she can listen to the playlist she made for her story, and that’s pretty much where her attention goes most of the day.  Sometimes, she looks at pictures she has on the computer that she says look like the people and places in her head.  I sit really really close to her chair so she knows I love her and I stare at her a lot. I hear kitty stares help writers make better stories. She says I do not have to sleep under her footrest, but I feel safe with that roof over my head, so she has to be very very careful when she gets up to feed me. Or get tea. But mostly feed me.

That is about it for this week. Lots of clicking of keys and scratching of pen on paper. I know that makes Anty happy, and there is always the chance that she will feed me when she gets up to make more tea.

Until next week, I remain,

Very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book.)

NaNot Ramblings Wrap-up: So That Was November…

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Talk about writing exactly as much as you, personally, need to talk about writing.
–Seanan McGuire

So here we are, December first, and NaNo 2014 is a memory, hopefully a good one for those who did and did not participate. I was a not this year, but I’m still counting it as a success. My plans for sneaking into write-ins resulted in exactly zero attempts at doing so; I was too busy keeping my head down and eyes on my own paper, which was a big surprise. I also visited the forums a grand total of zero times. I did meet a NaNo friend to write at a coffee house once and have plans to repeat the experience later this month. My source of community this month was emails and instant messaging with writer friends, notably a critique partner I will call CP, either casually while each worked on our own projects or dedicated chats scheduled in advance.

I found that nattering in detail with one trusted writer friend gave me what I needed to go into the head down, eyes on own paper mode. Some days, that was so  I would have something about which to natter. It’s a delicate balance between the thinking and talking happening at the same time while at the same time (yes, repetitive phrase, I know, but shush, gremilns. You can come back when it’s time to edit.) not getting so many other voices and expectations in my head that they drowned out the voices of characters and story.

It’s a journey of discovery, to be sure, and one that isn’t over merely because November is done. Fall and winter are my most productive times of year. I’m not sure if it’s the shorter days, the feeling of the world being safely tucked in for the night around four-thirty or so that makes me want to have most of the work done by then…but then sneaking in a bit more writing while doing the rest of the evening’s stuff.

The routine is getting set in place once more, and I think the writing will be better for it. I am a morning person. This means that, despite anyone else in the household spending the morning at a leisurely pace (if not heading out the door to an early shift) nine AM needs to see me dressed, made up, computer packed and feet out the door to home office away from home office at the coffee house one block over or Panera on the other side of the park. Tush in chair, tea at hand, notebook and computer at the ready and let’s do this thing. I’ve been juggling a couple of different projects at different stages, one of which does not want to be talked about at all, apart from discussions with CP – some stories are like that- and one which may want to drop a line here now and again. Some stories are like that, too. Both are perfectly fine. Stories come as stories come. If I had to pinpoint one thing I learned about my own writing from my NaNot month, it was this: I need to get out of the story’s way. Don’t try to cram it into a box where it won’t fit, but follow its natural form. Easy to say, but took some effort to learn.

I know how to do this. I have done this. I can  do this again. I am doing this now. The hypercritical gremlins that like to live in writers’ heads have their places (usually in the editing process) but it’s better, at least for me, to get that story down as wild as it comes from my brain and fix all the rough spots later, when it’s done. I had a gym teacher, Ms. Napier,  back in junior high who loved athletics like I love historical romance. When she took us girls on a cross country run, even those of us straining and panting as we hobbled along at the rear of the pack, she had one bit of wisdom for us: we were not allowed to quit if we could see the finish line.

It’s like that here. Can I see the end of the story? Yes. Then onward, fleet like a gazelle some days, eating the ground with long, confident strides. Panting and stumbling other times, still others prone on the floor, dragging myself forward by my fingertips, but an inch forward is still forward. I’m liking the way it works. Now bring on December.

NaNot Ramblings: When Enough is Enough

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You must create because the idea isn’t to create something that’s ‘good enough’ or ‘really perfect’ or anything else. You must create because the idea is to create, to make something where something wasn’t before.

-Wil Wheaton

“Is that going to be for writing or art?” my friend asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered as my hand stroked over the smooth, creamy pages criscrossed by thin gray lines. That’s part of the process, feeling the paper, looking through the empty pages to see what will one day fill them. It’s a few days later, after this notebook and I met across a decidedly un-crowded office supply store, but when you know, you know. It was on clearance, I was in love, and when you know, you know. Sometimes, you don’t know everything, but sometimes, you don’t need everything. You need enough.

That’s something I’ve learned from my month of not-NaNo-ing this year. Month’s not over, but some things don’t need a whole month to learn. Maybe this year, I got the spirit of NaNo if not the letter of the law. I can’t tell you how many words I put on a page since November first (okay, I could if I went through and ran word count on my current projects) but I can say that there is story there where there was no story before. I can say that I get up excited to put pen to paper and then transcribe. I have characters living in my head again, jabbering at me and poking me to get their story down. They correct me. He didn’t go there, he went here. She didn’t say that, she said this. The theme of the story isn’t what I planned for it to be, but it is what it actually is.

It’s similar to bonding with a new notebook, bonding with a story, and to a greater extent, with myself as a writer. I am glad I made that my focus this month, because that, in the end, will get me closer to The End than trying to force myself into somebody else’s process. That’s never going to work, and as a living thing, it’s going to change over time. Time was, I didn’t see the point in fancy notebooks. Plain spiral bound notebooks were all I’d ever used and if the whole point was to put what was in my head on that page, what did anything else have any business there?

Don’t ask me when it changed, but over time, it did. There was an alternative to white paper? :blink blink: Ivory or cream is much easier on my eyes, looks delicious and adds a special something extra, so I look for that now. I used to be a lined paper purist. Then I discovered a gridded notebook in a discount store, became intrigued and gave it a try. Then I took a leap and tried unlined pages.. Those froze me, until I read about drawing a box around the page. Tried that, then couldn’t fill pages fast enough. Go figure.

Now, I’m voracious. I want all the notebooks. Some are ready to use right out of the gate, and some, like my newest acquisition up there, need some prep work first. I still don’t know what will ultimately go on these pages. Maybe it’s for writing. Maybe it’s for art. Maybe it’s for both. What I do know is that I’m not going to force it, and I’m not going to force my current writing projects. That’s a hard lesson to learn, but a needed one. Stories, to me, are living things, and there comes a time when they take on their own direction. Forcing them is not ever going to work, and will only end up hurting both of us. Working with their natural inclinations, however, that’s a different story, pun intended, and I can’t wait to see where that’s going to take us.

Typing With Wet Claws: A Few Skulls Couldn’t Hurt

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Skye here, for another Feline Friday. It’s been an interesting week here. Though we are in New York, we did not get any of the big snow. We are several hours east of that, and while it is cold, all we have is sunshine and a few clouds. Anty has been at the glowy box a lot. She had two posts go live on Heroes and Heartbreakers:

A first look at Twice Tempted by Eileen Dreyer

and

Heart to Heart: The Walking Dead season 5, episode 6: Consumed by the Chemistry

I do not get to read books because I am a kitty (even though I am named after a book) so I do not know anything about the book she read, but I do get to watch The Walking Dead with my people. They seemed to really like this episode because it was Carol and Daryl and lots of things happened. I like the show because no kitties have been eaten or zombified. That is always the mark of a good show to me. Then again, I have never seen any kitties on that show, but that is my head canon.

So it begins...

So it begins…

Anty has begun the process of “fixing” my notebook alterations. The black and white book is the book that I peed on, but I have nothing to do with the brown book’s funny smell. That one is because Anty did not make sure her water bottle was fully closed before she put it in her purse. She did not check that until things became fragrant (personally, I think it smells fine the way it is, but humans are funny that way) and says this is the last ditch effort to de-stink both notebooks. She may take the paper out of the black and white book and have different paper put in, if only the paper is smelly, and that  seems to make her happy. So, with that in mind, did I really do such a naughty thing in altering the paper in this one? I don’t think so. Sometimes, it takes humans longer to grasp cat logic. Really, it’s not that difficult. If this paper is ruined, then Anty can use whatever paper she would like, and since ivory (or cream, like my undercoat) is easier on her eyes than stark white, this is actually a good move. I did what I had to do, and I did it out of love. Also a full bladder.

Listen here....

Listen here….

As part of Anty’s office reclamation, she has (finally) obtained earbuds for the old desktop computer. Anty really likes skulls, so these had to come home. Now if she will get rid of the speakers that came with us from the old house but have not worked in recent memory, that will get rid of some tangly wires and let me sit even closer to her while she is working. Not everybody knows this, but I can be a cat ninja when I want, and get reallyreallyclose without making a sound. Like on the humans’ feet close. It does not hurt that I am somewhat carpet-colored. Anty says I am allowed in the office, though I am not yet sure if I want to go in there. She has a lot of skulls. None of them are kitty skulls, though. Only human, and she says they are made out of things like plastic and rubber, not the actual remains of her enemies or anything like that. I don’t know; that would be an effective way of warding off interruptions. Warnings work, as a show of power and intent. Anty says a closed door does the same thing, but I think a couple of skulls on the door could not hurt.

Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

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