Typing With Wet Claws: Office Development Edition

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. It has been an interesting week to be a writer’s cat around here. Uncle has been around more in the mornings (he goes out to hunt more in the afternoons and evenings instead) so Anty has been trying different places where she can do her writing. Yesterday, she talked about making a temporary office in the park. In case you were wondering how she picked the right picnic table to use as her desk (besides the fact that it has a really good view of the ducks and geese) here is why:

obviously for lady writers

obviously for lady writers

That was very helpful of whichever human wrote on the picnic table, but I am sure it is all right if men sit there, too. It did not say anything about kitties, but most of us stay home, and wild kitties go wherever they want, so signs really would not do any good.

I think there is still Olivia hair in the keyboard...

I think there is still Olivia hair in the keyboard…

Another place Anty has been writing this week has been in her office. The computer in there is older than me (I am not very old, but still, that says something. Anty used to have Olivia on her lap when this computer was  new. Olivia was the kitty before me.) and does not connect to the internet, so when Anty is on that computer, all she can do is write. The speakers do not work, either, and Anty likes to have music when she writes. She takes Robin Sparkles (that is her tablet, if you are new here) in there with her when she wants music or needs to check her email. The secretary desk in there is not the best for a desktop computer, because it was designed for handwriting. Anty loves to write by hand, so this is a good thing for her. She has put the notebooks that apply to her current projects on top of the desk, to make their own bookshelf. She will write in longhand first, and then transcribe, whether that be on the desktop or laptop. Not so much on the tablet, since she has to use the onscreen keyboard there. The bookshelf looks like this:

Anty's bookshelf of works in progress

Anty’s bookshelf of works in progress

I will try to get a picture later. Do not be afraid of the gothy cover; that one is Anty’s bloodletting (what she calls freewriting) notebook and what is in it cannot hurt anybody. There are gummi bears in the giant cupcake. She can have one (gummi bear, not giant cupcake) when she meets her goal. There are two story notebooks, one for Her Last First Kiss, (The big one in the back lives on the shelf; the pink and blue small ones go in her purse, and the black one is her planner.)

These are all for HLFK, but the big one in the back is for the office

and then the other one, which she is working on with my Anty Melva, does not have a title yet, but the notebook pages look like this on the inside:

not a Disney book, I promise

and on the outside:

Not a Disney book, we promise

Not a Disney book, we promise

It is the book with the scary woman on the front.  (the red one is her all purpose book and lives in her bag, not her office) Anty liked this book because she says it reminds her of the attitude of a character in the book she is writing with Anty Melva. I will take her word on that. Anty and Anty Melva are still thinking of what they will call that story. I will let you know as soon as they say it is okay for me to share.

Anty says I cannot take pictures of her bookcases or the stuff on the floor, because she is still figuring out where things go. I am still not sure if I want to come into the office, because it has carpet on the floor, and the carpet is rather me-colored. This is good for shedding, but not as good for kitties who do not want to be unexpectedly stepped upon. Not that Anty would do that intentionally, but one never knows. Anty says she is going to try and pick up a different chair next week, which may make her more comfortable for working on the computer. She likes the chair she has now, but it is the wrong height for this type of desk. Back pain is not conducive to good writing, unless one is writing about back pain, which Anty is not. She is writing romance novels. Also about romance novels.

She is very busy getting ready to recap Outlander this Saturday. She says I am too young to know about the scene that will be in that episode, so I have no idea. Maybe it is about people voting or doing taxes or something like that. Sounds boring. What is not boring is Pinterest. Anty loves Pinterest. It is like a bulletin board for her stories and other interests, that she can take with her anywhere. This is good because she has not figured out how to fix the vintage bulletin board that used to be above the desk. The wire that held it broke, so it is now kind of behind the desk, and she needs to update the pictures and things on it anyway. Unless she gets fed up and puts it aside and uses Post-its instead. She does not know yet.

Anyway, she has two new Pinterest boards. This one is about rubber duckies, and this one is about skulls. Anty really likes both rubber ducks and skulls. She will put up boards for other motifs she likes, like snowflakes and fleur de lis, later. You can see all of Anty’s boards (except for the private ones) here. I notice she does not have any boards about Maine Coon Cats. I may have to fix that for her, now that I have my own computer (she still thinks it is her tablet. Humans are cute when they think things like that.) but first I would need to get it away from her. That is not an easy job.

Anty needs the keyboard back now, because she still has to format her Buried Under Romance post for tomorrow. It promises to be quite an adventure, so I had better nap in my sunbeam to rest. Until next week, I remain Very Truly Yours,

Until next week...

Until next week…

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

Going Off-leash

Mostly, you probably need to go deeper. Deeper, deeper, deeper. You should know everything there is to know about your characters and your settings.
–Barbara Samuel

The new tablet came home on Friday. I’d love to say that I’ve been hauling her (yes, my electronics are gendered) everywhere and been writing tons more, but there are a couple of things I have noticed before that can happen:

  1. Those keys are tiny.
  2. My fingers are gigantic
  3. I think part of the port where the cable plugs in to connect the tablet to the keyboard came out with the plug itself and I’m not sure how to get it back in there.
  4. The onscreen keyboard isn’t that bad, actually, and I am a technological wimp.

But I have been taking baby steps. First public wifi outing after church on Sunday, and things went smoother than I had expected. Still haven’t found the best place in my favorite coffee house to sit with the really short power cord, but then again, the battery is all new and powery and shouldn’t give me any problems in that regard. So far, I’ve mostly watched YouTube, checked my email and swiped my gigantic fingers around (and oddly enough, I have pretty petite hands when I’m not holding the tablet, so I am thinking this is situational) the screen, usually with some variation of “wait, what, were are we going? This thing is fast.” and/or “Where do I tap?” No doubt that I’ll figure it out through trial and error and possible desperate appeal to any tech-savvy collegians hanging out in the same coffee house, but there is a learning curve.

Learning curve as well with Her Last First Kiss. For a long time, writing had felt like trying to move a boulder up a hill by beating my head against said boulder. Now, I’m letting the characters lead, and the places they take me…where they want to go, they don’t have maps, or at least no maps I’ve ever read. It’s both exciting and scary. Imperial Russia? Colonial Canada? Madhouses? Hero who is basically the eighteenth century equivalent of a former child star unable to reconcile himself to life as an adult (and let us not forget self image issues, because that’s a biggie) and a heroine trying to treat intensely personal things like business matters because that’s easier than facing the Big Scary Feelings? I’m not sure I signed up for that.

It’s fitting that this book is being written at the same time I have this tiny pink piece of technology in my posession. They both scare me a little. Both big responsibilities but also tickets to an awful lot of fun. It’s the off-leash part of the writer park (which I imagine would be like a dog park, but for writers; the water fountain would likely dispense caffienated beverages, and there would probably be more chairs) – no more excuses. Even if I only have the touchscreen keyboard, boom, transcribing anywhere. I can have my story playlists with me without lugging the whole laptop and external keyboard with me everywhere. (Though if I end up having to plug this external keyboard into the tablet…actually, I probably wouldn’t mind that, because normal sized keyboard, so never mind. That one’s good.) Check research online in the park? No problem. Edit at the laundromat? Easy. So what’s stopping me?

One foot in front of the other, bend down, thumb the clasp on the leash and let that puppy run. Let the characters lead. I don’t know a thing? Well, look it up, Sherlock. This isn’t a history textbook. This is a romance novel. It’s a love story. It happens to take place in Georgian England. That’s their Now. That’s their Here. That’s their Normal, so it has to be normal to them, and painted so that it reads that way to the reader, but the love story is front and center, where it belongs.

It’s not a nice story, because I don’t want to write a nice story. I want my heart to break, along with my hero’s and heroine’s, because I know that it’s going to be put back together in the end. I want to take two star-crossed lovers who have given up on love and help them find their Happily Ever After, after all. Chuck off all the lies they’ve believed, for far too long, the ones that have held them back and become who they were always meant to be, as individuals and as a couple.

There are risks to take when trying something new, but once I catch the scent of a place where I can dig in deeper, I want to shove my hands elbow-deep into the soil of character and story. Why are they like that? What secrets are they hiding? How can I bribe these very private people to give up what they most want to keep hidden? Becuase it’s worth it all, I promise, promise, promise. Getting to the heart of the story, the heart of the characters, that’s where the life is, for characters and writer both. For the readers, I hope, as well, but that’s a way aways yet. For now, I’m letting this (figurative) puppy -and myself- off the leash, to run as we will.

I Have No Idea, or, Roadmaps

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
– Arthur Ashe

Not ideas, because I am not O  at a loss for any of those. I have index card files, seriously, so I am not going to run out any time soon. Not every idea is going to be written, but each one of them has something in there that I can use in some form. Even if what I glean from that is “never pitch a book idea you pulled out of your :ahem: self after not sleeping for three days straight because the pitch session just took an awkward turn. Not that that ever happened to anybody I know. :cough: But ideas, yes, lots of those.

What I’m talking about here is those days when I have no idea what I’m doing. I hate those. People who know me know that I’m a planner. I like to know what is going to happen, when, not to mention how. I love to-do lists, and the only think I like better than listing tasks is crossing them off. Maybe prioritizing, because that’s actually fun, especially if I get to play with highlighters.

Life, especially the writing life, doesn’t always work that day. Sometimes, the nonwriting life takes a good long look at a writer and says, “Writer, you are now officially my puching bag.” Whompity whompity whomp. Nonwriting life can have a mean left hook. Domestic tornado chains whip through what should be a fairly productive writing day. Sick family members, financial hiccups, domestic duties that require immediate attention, lest the universe implode, and the like are not going to take a break because we’re making good time on the work in progress, or a blog post due.

Which is where today’s ramble comes in. Yesterday had its challenges, and there was no way on earth I was going to give up my time with Her Last First Kiss, so Monday’s post got moved to Tuesday. I probably had some vague notion (or maybe a not so vague one) about what I wanted to cover in this blog post. Something about notebooks, maybe? A Camp NaNo update? How much fun it is to be splashing around in the shallows of a new book, and then, without meaning to, diving down deep and finding ohhhhhh, that’s why that thing was in that scene. I may not have known what I was doing at the time my hero picked up a china dog in a shop (and a scene I didn’t plan), as a gift for the heroine, but he did, and that’s what matters. He knew she would like it, even if I had no earthly idea, bu a few chapters later, when she finally admits a Deep Secret she will only trust to him, it all makes sense.

i1035 FW1.1

We’ve been in our current home for about two and a half years now, Real Life Romance Hero and Housemate and Skye and I , and only recently did I finally get around to employing an arty idea I’d had while apartment hunting. I’ve tried scrapbooking, and it’s really not for me, but I love mixed media art, and anything even remotely notebook-related. About a week or so ago, I took out the map we’d used in finding our home, so that I could memorialize the search with art. I covered the cardboard box that my new computer cord came in with part of that map, and now use it to store pens and a small notebook. Easily portable, unique and personal. It reminds me of the writing desk the hero of Her Last First Kiss counts as his most prized posession. His is wood, not cardboard, far more durable than what I have, and he sure as anything wouldn’t have made it himself (carpentry is not his thing) but the connection, that’s there, and it’s strong. Through all of his travels, my hero counts his writing desk as his true home, and I can relate to that.

Today has been one of those punching bag days. Yesterday was another. This post exists because I don’t like having to push back Wednesday’s post because I haven’t yet done Monday’s post, and because posting is one thing I can control when nonwriting life starts lobbing stuff at me. Sit down at the keyboard and blabber about writing? I can do that. I may not know the exact topic when I set out on the journey, but that’s okay. I know how to write. I’ll get there.

So it is with the art and discipline of writing a book. It’s been a while since I’ve had a hero and heroine talk to me this clearly ( things,perhaps, only other writers will understand) amd I am not going to squander that. Maybe I don’t know where we’re going for a particular session, but I trust them. I trust that I know how to write a book. I’ve done it before. I can do it again. I am doing it now. Sometimes, we need to make the maps while we explore, then follow them later.

Telling the Story

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
– Terry Pratchett

Well, that’s one week of Camp NaNo in my rearview mirror, and I seem to be doing all right so far. This is a bit different from past NaNo endeavors, in that I’m not focusing on writing. Also, that I’m ahead of my goal. How’d that happen? This time, I’m telling myself the story. I’d discovered, last week, while talking with a critique partner, that I’d never bothered to write down the outline for Her Last First Kiss. Huh wuh? Nothing? Not a thing? Cue frantic flipping through notebooks both dedicated (those are new, so it didn’t take long) and multipurpose ones. Check any computer files that might possibly have been misfiled under a different name. Do a computer search for hero’s and heroine’s  names. Nope, never did.

I’d classify myself as more of a puzzler than plotter or pantser, but I’m not labeling at this point. What I am doing is telling the story. The fact that I’ve been able to hold so much of it in my head, so clearly, for so long, is a good thing, but the stories we keep in our heads and nowhere else don’t get a lot of circulation. The scariest thing in the world would be to get to the end of my life and think “I could have been a successful writer.”  Scratch the could be and replace with “am.”  Successful, right now, means showing up and getting this story down. That’s all I have to do right now. Tell the story. There’s time enough after I get to the end of this draft to make things all pretty and get fancy with finishing touches. For now, the emphasis isn’t on how many words there are in the file but on getting the story told. How did we get from Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After? With romance, we know the Happily Ever After Part is a gaurantee, like we know in a mystery that the detective will find out who committed the crime, but along the way? We can do anything. I think that’s pretty exciting.

In telling myself the story, I am discovering it. Though I do like to have an outline when I write the book, in the telling the story portion, surprises come up when they will, without me trying to shoehorn them in because that’s where they should fall according to beat sheet or pinch point or any other paradigm. Not saying those things aren’t useful; they are, and I love finding out how other writers work. Some of that stuff finds its way into my own process, and some remains an interesting tidbit that works better for others. Floating bits of unrelated things (this is one of the places where that puzzler thing comes in) bump into each other and bond, and, without my having put much thought into it, they make sense.

I really had no idea why my hero impulsively bought my heroine a cheaply made china dog, but then when she tells me (only writers understand fictional characters telling us what really happened) that she knew her father was leaving the family when he took his favorite hunting dog, there was that “oh” moment. So that’s what those things were all about. Okay, that gives me some structure. I know that my hero (I really should be using their  names here, but want to keep that private for a while longer) and heroine had a conversation in which she mentioned dogs, though she doesn’t have any, and that it made an impression on him, which is why he picked that china dog (very clear in my head, and it’s actually kind of ugly) because he knew it would make her happy.

This process rather fits this book, because neither my hero nor heroine have that firm a grasp on what they’re doing. The whole falling in love thing isn’t for them, both believing they’re locked out of that game. They made plans. Love wasn’t in them. Funny, but it tends to find its way in ,anyway. Which is a lot like the process of discovering a story.

Also, we have ducks:

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Typing With Wet Claws: It’s Not Easy Being Mews Edition

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. It is finally feeling like spring here. That means that it is not freezing all the time, and I can watch birdies through the living room window while Anty and Mama have their breakfast. Uncle gets up a little later, and I have his breakfast with him in the kitchen. Everybody gives me kitty food when they get their people food, so I am not going to complain.

This week, Anty began Camp NaNo. That is a time when humans who write try to do a lot of writing in a short amount of time. That is like NaNo, except it does not make Anty as stressed, because she can decide how much writing she wants to do. Really, how much writing she wants to tell people she does, because she does a lot of writing. It’s the counting the words she does not like. She likes the actual writing fine. I am glad I do not have to count things. My job as a mews (see what I did there?) is to sit very very close to Anty and send out love beams. That is inspiring, I think, although I do not know how effective it is when it comes to making her put more kitties in her stories.

Yesterday, she put a dog in her new book. Only a china dog in this scene, but I looked at her outline. There will be a real dog later. She said the characters put the dog in there; she didn’t. I am not too sure about that. I know that characters are people who live inside Anty’s head, so maybe she should talk to some of them about having cats. There are horses in this book, but that is mostly because horses dragged the people carriers around in the times Anty’s stories are set. I have never met a horse, so I do not have a firm opinion on this, other than that it would not be too hard for Anty to maybe mention a barn cat or two when one of the horses is in its stable. I think that is fair recompense for all my hard work. If that is okay. Anty is most dominant in our pride, so I cannot tell her what to do, but I can make suggestions. Also look very very cute. I am good at that.

tools of the trade

tools of the trade

Anty has been doing a lot of writing this week, which keeps her busy, and that is a good thing. As you may be able to see in the picture of her keyboard, we have some casualties. There is now no letter at all on the E key, the Q key now looks like a broken O, and the L is pretty much a scratchy line. Anty says she may write letters on those keys with a silver Sharpie, but she knows what keys are where, so I do not think she is going to do that anytime soon. Also, people need to kiss on TV more, so that Anty can write about that and have more posts up on Heroes and Heartbreakers. She is part of this post on bloggers’ best reads of March, which has lots of ideas if you do not know what to read next. A word of warning: Anty’s pick is a very thick book that makes a loud sound when it is dropped. Loud sounds are scary. At least she read it by the bed, so I did not have to go far if I wanted to run under the bed for some reason. She is considerate that way.

goth laundry?

goth laundry?

This week also means it is time for Anty to get ready to go to the NECRWA conference. I have talked about that before, so I will not repeat myself here, except to say that the whole getting ready thing is not exactly cat-friendly. She does open the closet a lot and take clothes out, which I find very interesting. Sometimes, she puts them back in and sometimes she does not. Ever since she took the bright colors she does not like very much out of the closet, she has more fun playing with clothes. Most of her laundry looks like the picture above. Some of it is Uncle’s, but the stripey things and anything with a skull on it should be Anty’s. Sometimes new clothing comes home when Anty goes out hunting, and it does not smell like our things, until she washes it and wears it, and then it does. Until then, I am suspicious of all new items. I am not entirely convinced that the Skirt of Doom is not going to come back, even though I was the one who made it go away in the first place. Never you mind how. I was never sure if it was on Anty, part of Anty, or, worst of all, if it had Anty. Sometimes, a kitty has to do what a kitty has to do.

Anty needs the computer back, and it is lunchtime, so that is about it for this week. Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

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

So I’m Camping

Put something on the page. The story will come.
–Mairi Norris

Yesterday, I remembered I’d signed up for Camp NaNo. The day before, I’d remembered I’d signed up for RWA’s The End, and had been meeting my goal there for the last two months, so this one couldn’t be any different. This means that I am doing two writing challenges at once. I’m using the same project, Her Last First Kiss, and this is very much a rough draft I’m using for both.

Initially, I wasn’t going to do either. Word count and I are not friends. Not that it doesn’t matter how long a work is, but if I focus on that aspect during a rough draft, I am not going to get anywhere. I know myself well enough by this point that how I work doesn’t allow for that. Let me tell the story first, and then we’ll work the rest out later. So, how, or more importantly, why did I find myself participating in two -no, I tell a lie (and thank you, research on the vernacular of Northern Ireland for that one,) it’s actually three, as CRRWA is tracking member word count for this year, though I haven’t reported in there yet- at the same time?

Part of it is the way real life has swept through recently, and carefully made plans get shoved to the side when there is caregiving that needs to be done right this minute. As a person whose only reason not to have started a notebook notebook (that is, a notebook devoted to keeping track of my other notebooks) being that I have not yet found the perfect notebook to used for such a purpose, I like to have things well planned out, both in life and in writing. Good plan, but it doesn’t always work that way, in either area.

Which is basically how I found myself, yesterday, moving my laptop around the coffee house table, trying to evade the sunlight streaming in (because I have not yet comprehended that my favorite seat in that section will result in me being unable to see the screen due to aforementioned sunlight, which counters the whole going there to write thing, but I am both stubborn and determined) onto my screen and figuring out where I record my progress on two out of the three. I was going to do this, and that was that. I love this book and these characters and their story more than I’ve loved any project I’ve worked on in a long time. Years, really, so this is happening, and on my terms.

I spent some time staring at the blank Scrivener screen, stymied by where a new chapter goes, and how many scenes should be in a chapter, anyway? To which my writer brain screamed a loud, insistent, STOP. No math now. None of it. Close Scrivener. Open Word. Blink at blank Word screen. Close Word. Stick in earbuds, open hero notebook and take out pen. Write bullet points. What happens next? Wite that. How did hero react to that? Write what happens next after that, all the way to the end of the scene. When that’s done, open Word again and transcribe. Kind of comfortable, that. Punch word count button and enter number in appropriate blanks, then go play Sims. That, I can do.

That would be the blue one...

That would be the blue one…

Getting distracted from what works is all too easy for some writers to do. There are a lot of shoulds floating around out there. This person’s career is taking off. That one’s tanked. That other one had a great career, it tanked, and then they came back with another name or subgenre and all of that in the time I’ve been stomping around in the woods with a bucket on my head and both feet stuck in rotten logs. But those are their journeys, and this one is mine. I’m the one who gets to say how I do it, because I’m the one who knows this story the best, and I’m the one who’s in the best place to see what actually gets the story told. If there happen to be bullet points in pretty notebooks along the way, I’m fine with that. I’d rather have fun getting the story told than bash my head bloody against a brick wall to reach a particular number.

It’s not about the numbers for me, or even about the words themselves. It’s about this hero and this heroine, two broken people who find wholeness is within their reach after all, both individually and together. I can’t think of anything more delightful to do with my time. It’s on.

Paperblanks Filigree Family Portrait

Well, it finally happened. After literally months of drooling over and longing for the Paperblanks grande blue filigree notebook, a Barnes and Noble coupon and well managed family finances allowed Big Daddy Precious to come home. Which, of course, required the family portrait above.

Paperblanks, my precioussssss...

Paperblanks, my precioussssss…

I think the reason I’d resisted Paperblanks for as long as I did was because of the plain pages inside. Technically, very lightly lined, but free of ornamentation, and I generally like to have something to look at while I’m writing. Then I learned to draw boxes around things and add curlicues to the boxes, and that generally makes my brain happy, so I no longer had an excuse.

typical planner page

typical planner page

Paper is smooooth, which I love, and  I like the rounded corners on the pages. The covers are beyond stunning, and I suspect that the family portrait is not by any means complete, as there are still other colors and formats to be had.

At present, the small black book (aka Baby Badass Precious) is my daily planner, and the rest are for Her Last First Kiss. Small blue book (aka Baby Boy Precious) was originally going to be my all purpose notebook for this project, but soon found that wasn’t going to hold everything, and I like a larger format. So, smaller books are easier to tuck in my tote or pocket and take my show on the road. The large blue book, (aka Big Daddy Precious) will be taking over from the deconstructed Studio Oh! book I’d been using (Still not sure what purpose that one will serve now; I can’t remove the used pages, and I get funny about switching purpose once a book has been started, so it may be for overflow. Maybe something else. We’ll see. Maybe it needs to go into a resting period. I do still like it, but now that I have a theme going, I like to stick to that. ) and will live on my Secretary desk. I’ve never felt that strong a connection between a notebook and writing surface before, but trust me, these fit.

Baby Boy Precious is now for working out hero stuff for HLFK, Baby Girl Precious for heroine stuff, and they all come together in Big Daddy Precious. May need to keep peepers peeled for Big Mama Precious or some other relatives for overflow.

I’ve only tested three inks so far, but sometimes, that’s all one needs.

Ink Test

Ink Test

Pilot Varsity fountain pen is winning so far, Micron 05 a close second, and I am surprised that the R-2 rollerball, a dollar store find (!) holds its own with the other two. Not much bleed through on any of the three, so I think I’m good whatever way I go with this one. Can’t make myself try a ballpoint on this paper, and it will probably be a while before I put a highlighter to it, if at all.

One parting shot, because I am not going to get tired of seeing how gorgeous these all look together. Methinks the family still needs to expand a bit.

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Classy, huh?

Now to fill them all….

A Camping I Will Go (NaNo style) And Other Tales

I’m doing Camp NaNo this year.

I hadn’t planned on it. In fact, I’d planned on not doing it, because NaNo wordcounts give me the heebie-jeebies, and as I told the delightful Shannon Kauderer at today’s Saratoga Romance Writers meeting, tend to leave me in a fetal position under the dining room table, sobbing uncontrollably. Shannon reminded me that I can set my own word count for Camp NaNo, even zero, and that the moral support, which is what I’d liked about NaNo in the first place, was the main point. So, this year, I’m camping. Also, Shannon has mermaidy green curly hair and charm for days, so that may have had something to do with the fact that I am now officially signed up. Not focused on word count; it’s all about the story for me.

ready to work

ready to work

Good thing, that, as Shannon, the regional municipal liason for NaNoWriMo (and camps) was the guest speaker, presenting her workshop on the Snowflake Method of plotting. I’ve taken this before, when Shannon presented at CRRWA, then, as now, with the delightful SueAnn Porter as my companion, so I knew what I was in for, and surely, I’d whip through this, no problem, be all set to charge forward.

Not exactly. The first step, creating a one sentence description of one character’s journey, had me stymied at first. Lots of writing, lots of crossing out, lots of squeezing in teeny tiny words above those crossed out lines, and I finally came up with this:

A disreputable rogue finds the love of a lifetime in the one woman he can never have — his best friend’s mistress. 

Hm not half bad there. Okay, the meeting itself went rather smoothly. I felt right at home in the, warm, welcoming and professional group, and definitely plan on visiting again. I am not only saying that because I won the drawing for these lovely blooms right here:

Free flowers, that's how to welcome visitors.

Free flowers, that’s how to welcome visitors.

It was when SueAnn and I hit the parking lot that things got interesting. Flat tire. SueAnn figured we could limp along to the nearest service station, but reversed her decision and direction and we headed back to the parking lot. There was a quick fix kit in her trunk, which we both gave the old college try, but the green sludge in the squeezy bottle refused to go into the actual tire.

actual green slime

actual green slime

In my family, the words “dripping green slime” are a way of expressing barely contained anger, but there was none of that as SueAnn and I waited for AAA to show and swap flat tire for spare tire, which turned out to be the smaller donut sort. With weather thankfully warm for the day, we waited as only writers can – picking apart bad endings to good movies and TV shows, and fixing them. By the time AAA did show, we had a couple more stops before I could head home and charge straight into writing.

at least we tried

at least we tried

Adventure over? Not a chance. SueAnn wanted to get the real tire fixed and back on, which makes sense as she’s off on another adventure with Mr. Porter after she drops me off at home, so we had a short detour to the place from which her tires originally came.  There, we met an individual SueAnn has asked me to dub “Ridiculously Handsome Tire Guy.” We do not have a picture of Ridiculously Handsome Tire Guy, but SueAnn put him at “Derek Morgan level” (Shemar Moore in Criminal Minds) found herself distracted enough to momentarily forget how to speak English, which she assures me is indeed her native tongue (but sorry, SueAnn, “tire” and “photograph” are not synonyms, no matter that the gent in question seemed to catch her drift even so) and drop her purse. Somewhere out there, she’s sure, a romance novel is missing its cover model.

ridiculously handsome writer's dog

ridiculously handsome writer’s dog

Quick stop by Chez Porter to feed Bailey and make sure he got to :ahem: visit the great outdoors (and pose for a photo op) and then time to brave the traffic to drop me home. What do I do immediately upon arrival? Yep, head for they keyboard. A day spent talking writerly things gets me excited to go home and put all that theory into practice. The more I live with that one line blurb, the more I like it. Should be a fun time at camp this year.

Update: Flowers now exiled to office, as incessant sneezing makes me suspect I may be allergic. Balcony door now open to let in the evening air as I snuggle under a blanket to further explore story doings.

Typing With Wet Claws: Crunching the Numbers Edition

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Exhausting week this time, with Uncle sick, but he is feeling much better now. It is still cold outside, even though there are some birds outside the living room window. If I could jump (I do not, because I have special paws) I would be on the window seat all the time, because birds are very, very interesting.  The art across from Anty’s favorite seat at the coffee house has changed. It is now this:

i1035 FW1.1

This week, Anty has been writing a lot. There are the blog posts, here and elsewhere, and she is hard at work on a new book. There is a lot that goes into writing a new book, besides only telling the story. Since Anty writes historical romance, she has to make sure that she has the historical details right, but not in a boring or heavy handed way. The love story is the center and the history has to come second to that, but still provide versimillitude. That is a big human word that means it has to feel right. Anty  has to get enough of the historical flavor to make sure the story fits its time and the people don’t think, talk or behave like modern humans, but still in a way that modern humans can understand and relate to them. Anty usually does have kitties in her books, and I am her consultant. I make sure the kitties are still kitties, because we do not change that much, no matter the time period.

Humans, though, are another story. I did not mean to put that pun in there, but i will let it stay. The humans who are in Anty’s stories…how should I put this?  They have problems. Personally, I think that if they  had more kitties, they would have fewer problems, but Anty says humans without problems are not that interesting. I guess she knows best, because she has books out and I do not, but I still think there should be more kitties. I hear there may be dogs in this book. I am not sure how I feel about that.

Yesterday, Anty spent a chunk of time figuring out how old the important humans in her story were. Sometims, Anty gets anxious about certain details. If she gets it wrong, does that mean the book is doomed? Is it too much detail or maybe to little? Is this marketable? Maybe she should write something more on trend (I have to remind her that is a very silly human concern, since trends in books are really about two years old when they hit the shelves, and that is slightly less than one third of my age. I say she should write the story and she says I am right and then she goes back to making clicky sounds on the keyboard and I can take another nap, because i find that sound soothing.)

Where was I? Oh, right, human ages. That involves numbers, and Anty does not like dealing with numbers. She would rather tell stories, but because her stories are historical, that means she is going to have to deal with numbers at some point. Anty likes to have clear boundaries when she writes. That means she needs to know how old her people are, what year it is, and things like that. Vague definitions make her fidgety, and I pick up on that, so really, if she wants a happy kitty, she needs to deal with this. Yesterday, she was on the glowy box, and her friend , Vicki, helped her figure out the ages.

Anty was having problems figuring out who was how old. Vicki is good at noticing when Anty goes into a loop (that means worrying about the same thing over and over again so that no writing gets done.) She suggested Anty look up the average age for first marriage of male heirs of peers during the era in which her story takes place. (Anty had already figured out the year the story has to take place by looking at historical events that impacted her people, so she knew when to look for this.) The answer was late twenties to about thirty. The hero in this book is a second son, so these figures did not apply to him, but it did apply to a secondary character, and Anty knows that the hero is two years older than that character, who is two or three years older than the heroine, so there was a lot of math involved, and talking about that is tiring me out, so I can only imagine what it was like for her.

Anty and Vicki agreed that it all depended on how old Anty wanted the heroine to be (Anty would say it’s not how old she wanted the heroine to be, but how old she is, because that’s the way people show up in her head, and you can’t go around telling people how old they have to be, because that’s not the way that it works. Plus, I think that would be rude.) and they could figure out everybody else’s ages from there. First round of numbers Vicki came up with, Anty shot down because everybody felt too old. So, Vicki asked Anty (Vicki has known Anty and the way Anty writes for a long time, so she is smart about things like this) how old the hero feels. Anty said twenty-seven, which is what Vicki also thought, so that meant the other human male was twenty-five and the heroine twenty-two or twenty-three. This is, some might be surprised to find out, not out of the ordinary for a woman to be that age at that time and not yet married. These are things humans find out when they do research.

Anty is giving me that look again, and I want a snack, so I will wind this up for now. If you did not get to read Anty’s post last week at Buried Under Romance, about how to pay tribute to a favorite author who has gone to Rainbow Bridge, it is here. If you are new to the blog and have not read her posts on remembering BertriceHuman, they are here, here, and here.

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

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

Until next week...

Until next week…

Typing With Wet Claws: Work From Home Edition

Hello, all. Skye here for another Feline Friday.

Interesting week here as always. Anty painted her claws, Uncle got an extra night off because of the snow, and we are getting more snow this weekend. This will probably mean there could be snow days for Mama and/or Uncle, but Anty does not get snow days, because Anty works at home. This does not seem entirely fair to me, because Anty really really loves snow, but I am only a kitty and snow days are human things.

Anyway, this week, I would like to talk about what it is like to have a human who works at home. Merely because the human is in the home does not mean they are not working. While it is true that Anty likes to do laundry, she always has a notebook with her, because quiet laundromat time is good writing time. Anty says she does her best writing in longhand and can put it into the glowy box later. When she is putting things into the glowy box, and has her headphones on, that is a signal that she is At Work and Not Available. It does not always work out that way, because emergencies happen. Like feeding me. I get little bits of food throughout the day, so I  need to ask a human when I want a snack. Most of the time, that is Anty. Usually, I give her big pitiful eyes, and that will do the job. If I get between the left side of her comfy chair and the table next to it, then she knows I really , really need her.

Sometimes, she really, really needs me. That is usually when she wants to take my picture. I do not always want my picture taken. Like this time:

i1035 FW1.1

The humans all like to mess around with the fur on the top of my head (Mama calls that my hair) but I do not know why. Can any of you figure it out? Anty messed with my hair before she took this picture. I, as you may be able to tell, was not an enthusiastic participant.

Most days, Anty spends the majority of her time with a notebook or glowy box, sometimes flipping through big books to look for something she needs to know. Sometimes she talks to other writers inside the glowy box. All of those things are work, but that does not mean she does not take time to play with me. If I look really, really pitiful, she will take a break and we will play.

Me and the BEST TOY EVER

Me and the BEST TOY EVER

This week, Anty has been doing a lot of work. She got the first scene down for Her Last First Kiss, is fixing a short story she wrote a long time ago (I was not even born yet, if you can believe that) and is very happy with that. She also has a new post at Heroes and Heartbreakers, about this week’s big shippy moment on The Mindy Project (I did not see any ships in that program, but I think she means it is kissy things. Anty writes a lot about kissy things.)  Her post is here, and it looks like this:

i1035 FW1.1

That is not all, because more things are Coming Soon.

OnBeyondFanfic

It is only eight more days before Anty goes to her CR-RWA meeting and presents her On Beyond Fanfic workshop. She is still deciding which exercises to have people do during the meeting, so if you are planning on going, it is probably a good idea to bring paper and pen. She is looking forward  to this very much, and will talk about it more next week.

It is less than a month before Anty participates in 31 Days & 31 Ways to Jumpstart Your Life. Anty is one of many people talking about ways to make life better. Her topic is creativity. I think convincing a cat to blog is pretty creative, so maybe give this thing a try. It is free and Anty would love to see you there.

Okay, Anty is looking at the clock now and telling me it is almost time to move to the coffee house and put things in the glowy box, so I guess that is about it for this week. Until next week, I remain,

Very Truly Yours,

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

Until next week...

Until next week…