All Dressed Up and No Place to Go, aka Not at Nationals

July 21, 2015July 21, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

It’s that time of year again. RWA Nationals, this year in New York, which made me insanely happy when I first heard of the choice of venue. I’d promised myself as soon as my critique partner told me where this year’s Nationals would be, that I would be in New York for that one. I am, after a fashion. I live in New York, but not in New York City. I’m about two hours away, and I love where I live, but the fact remains that I am not attending Nationals, and I am grouchy about that.

Not that I’m not thankful to have what I have, and be where I am, because I am. I have a new laptop that works beautifully, I’m working on multiple projects that feel right for me, and get a few extra days at home with Real Life Romance Hero thanks to the recommendations of a people vet, to use Skye’s term. Plus I get to hang out with a gorgeous Maine Coon all day. These are not bad things.

Still, for the extroverted romance writer, RWA Nationals is like extroverted romance writer Christmas. A whole hotel, crammed full of people who do what I do and love what I love? Free books and swag everywhere? A chance to see old friends and meet new ones, and literally be surrounded by the romance industry? What’s not to love? I know big conferences can be hard for more introverted types, with all those people and so little quiet space and time, but for me, it’s like putting a duck in water. Paddlepaddlepaddle, I got this. What do you write? And you? And you? And you? What are you reading? Who’s watching Poldark? Here, have a business card. :tries to find business card port on laptop, gives up:

I love getting dressed up; for me, that’s what feels natural and comfortable, so I’m not missing out on that one at all. I’m wearing a long navy eyelet dress today, matching sandals, beachy hair, makeup done, because I am going out somewhere, even if it’s only down the block to my favorite coffee house (it’s hot out, and I do not do heat, humidity, or sun well.) There comes a point in every day when the need to be around people who do not share my address and/or last name becomes as important as food and air. The definition of extroversion I use is that an extrovert gains energy from being around other people and spends it alone. Go be with people to fill my tank, then jump into story world to spend all that energy by myself, writing. That seems to work pretty well for me. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve been attending the New England RWA conference for several years, and love that. My favorite part is Saturday breakfast, because that is extroverted morning person Christmas. Hotel full of people who love to talk about romance writing (and reading) and there’s breakfast food? Only problem there is that 7AM feels late for me (uber-morning person here; I trace this back to a particular late fall morning when I was a preschooler, and my morning person mother showed me why predawn is the best time for those like us to get up. Mist wrapping around the bare-limbed trees as the night faded into dawn burned itself into my memory, and I still remember that switch flipping on as we looked out the kitchen window together. There may have been pancakes.) Add copious amounts of tea to the mix, and I become supercaffieneated extroverted morning person. Scary at times, but also, for me, super super super fun.

Then there’s workshops, which I drink in like a thirsty camel slurps water. Last year, I took a stab at moderating a couple of workshops, which I loved and will probably do again in the future. Volunteering at a conference brings on a whole other level of experience. I’ve helped with breakfast setup (morning people think this is fun, not work, so best to take full advantage when possible) once, which had the added benefit of being able to pick my seat in advance of the meal, by criteria of what book would be on my seat. I have not yet been able to train Real Life Romance Hero to put a newly released historical romance on my seat at every meal, but maybe if I give him a stack, he could try, just for this week? It’s not asking that much.

At this past year’s NECRWA conference, I skipped a workshop to huddle in a corner of the lobby and write an entire scene on my tablet. Considering that I had not yet mastered the touchscreen and was doing this without a stylus (we shall call this time the dark ages) this is an accomplishment. I also had not discovered how to toggle between letters and numbers and thus believed that the office program had no quotation marks (I know, I know, please consider that endearing) but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the atmosphere, all the inspiration in the air, and that it had reached critical mass. That a friendly face could take one look at what was going on, say something akin to “oh, you’re writing. Catch you later,” and that would still count as contact.

I haven’t been to Nationals yet, and it’s not going to be this year. I’m disappointed in that, but I do know that I will be, at the right time, with a new book to shill…er, promote. I meant promote. In the meantime, if you haven’t had enough of my blabber, here’s my first shot at video blogging with the new laptop:

On Jumping Through Flaming Hoops

July 7, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

E. L. Doctorow

Today, I am borrowing Housemate’s laptop, which is also currently Real Life Romance Hero’s laptop, as his gave up the ghost before mine did. I am writing this at Real Life Romance Hero’s desk, with the earbuds from my tablet, which is really more like earbud, singular, as only one works, because RLRH needed my laptop earbuds for his smartphone. His earbuds died before my earbuds became earbud, so I was happy to share the wealth.

On the way to the desk, I dropped the camera I needed to take today’s picture. The battery compartment sprang open, and I thought, for a minute, that the camera had breathed its last. Thankfully, I’d only put the batteries in again backwards. I have no idea how to use the camera on my tablet, so most of my use of that now consists of chasing Skye around the living room, asking her, “where’s your face?” Okay, question is really for the tablet, so that I can figure out where the darned camera actually is aimed. I have room for vast improvement in that area. So far, I am really good at getting blank walls in my view. I don’t think that’s exactly how it works.

I have one of two jump drives stuck in the USB port, the other one soon to go in alongside it, providing they fit. This excites me more than the average bear, because I can’t use them both on my own laptop, as one port is permanently occupied by the external keyboard that I am still convinced had some role in shutting off my internet from that particular computer, and if this is an easily fixable thing, I am going to have words for myself, and not the fictional kind. New laptop has, according to tracking, left the warehouse and is on the way to a local big box store for pickup. Could be there as soon as tomorrow, could be as late as the weekend. Until then, it’s jumping through flaming hoops to do things that ought to be easier.

To write a long overdue post for another blog, I need to do some research on this computer, then write that down longhand and take it to my office at the other end of the house and write it on the desktop that has Word (this laptop does not, as it does not belong to a writer) then save to jump drive. Then jump drive comes back to this laptop so I can send it in at long last. Similar hoop jumping needs to happen for critting two friends’ manuscripts and work on one of my own, so I can send pages to this project’s critique partner.

Working on the desktop, which is older than Skye, and probably still has Olivia hair in the keyboard somewhere, means that I need to bring the tablet into the office as well, since I write best with music playing. I still have not yet found the ideal configuration of working at my desk with the current machines. Working on manuscript will mean working on non-internet laptop, as that’s the one that has Scrivener on it, which I am only now learning how to use for my particular purposes (as a kinesthetic learner, my best route is to jump in, muck about and find my own way; this is usually messy and results in a lot of things that don’t work, along my way to finding what does.) Using my current laptop at my desk means either having the external keyboard in my lap and head tilted at an interesting angle because earbud cord and charger cord for tablet are only so long, or having tablet ,in my lap and balancing external keyboard over laptop keyboard. That second option means that the external keyboard will randomly turn my laptop’s sound off and on, remind me I have no bluetooth devices (thanks, I knew that already) and/or that I am not connected to the internet. (Again, got that.)

This is not my ideal working environment, especially on a day that is so hot and sticky that the only thing I actually want to do is take a nap, which would make up for the too-humid-to-sleep night. Still, there is nothing that I would rather do than write in and about my favorite genre (time for reading it later) so, if jumping through the flaming hoops listed above is what I have to do to get there, then fine. I will do that. That’s the best thing to come out of the robot uprising attaching itself to multiple family medical emergencies in the last two months.

After two months of hands on caregiving, things are looking different. The theoretical schoolbus has dropped me off again, in front of whatever institute of learning is involved in this whole writing thing. As with improving one’s physical self, I’m going to consider that resistance builds stregnth. I’m inspired by a former student of mine, from my From Fanfiction to Fantastic Fiction course, a session a couple years back now, who wrote of how she would dismantle her entire desktop system, back when this was a Big Deal, load it in the back of her car, every weekend, so she could drive two hundred miles to the house where her collaborator lived. Once there, she’d put the darned thing back together, they’d spend the entire weekend writing, only to dismantle it, make the long haul back home and do it all over again the next week. I am still in awe of that sort of dedication, and, now that I do have to jump through hoops, I get it. It’s worth it.

Random Thoughts From a Tired Mind (with pictures of ducks)

July 2, 2015annabowling 2 Comments

Hopping on the Thursday Thirteen bandwagon today, because a dose of normal in the current sea of chaos is welcome today, and having a bit of structure helps immensely. So.

Random duck pictures will be a lot easier now that I have a camera cord again, though the ones in this post are from a few weeks back.
I am happy to be a caregiver, and at the same time, really want a nap. Also some reliable way of remembering what day it is. Internet and calendars, yes, those are helpful.
If the library could get our family another copy of Game of Thrones, season one, with season two following close behind, that would be great. I am in withdrawal.
Reading historical romance, my favorite genre, is really hard right now, and I am not at all certain why. I am fairly sure this will pass, but I want to read romance, though it’s hard to get into and that bugs me like heat rash.
Realistic YA reading (and listening) binge continues. I have not developed a desire to write in this genre, but reading it works quite well. I could gorge on the raw emotion I’m finding there and want to carry it over to romance.
I wonder if I left my favorite historical romance books and my favorite realistic YA books in a candlelit room with Barry White music playing, if they would kindly breed.
I suspect their method of reproduction may be through my brain and fingers.
Technology is not my friend, and I suspect may actually be writing nasty things about me on the walls of whatever it is computers use as bathrooms. I do not want to know what computers use as bathrooms.
Notebooks are love. It is not possible to have too many notebooks. Starting a separate notebook blog crosses my mind more frequently than I would like to admit.
When I am not writing romance, I miss it like a homesick orphan. :dims lights, cues spotlight, sings even more mournful version of “Memory” from Cats.:
Computer issues will be solved, at some point, one way or another, and finding workarounds in the meantime is a good way to stretch creativity, but I am looking forward to finding the solution even more.
I am impatient for the Paper Towns movie, and to see the two episodes of Poldark waiting on my DVR. I also would like to mush them together and see if they breed, but then remind myself to see #7 above.
One earbud from the set that came with my tablet has just given up the ghost. See #8 above. This requires more ducks:

duck, duck…

…goose

Typing With Wet Claws: Direcat Edition

June 26, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for a slightly later than usual Feline Friday. Anty has been busy this week, as we get things with Uncle and people vets sorted out. I am happy to report that he still does not have to wear the cone of shame and does not have to take as many pills after we saw the most recent people vet. I imagine Anty is relieved, but mostly, right now, she is tired.

I am writing this post on Mama’s laptop, because Anty’s has decided it does not like the internet anymore, or maybe it thinks that now the tablet can do all that internet stuff. Either way, this means that Mama’s laptop is now everybody’s laptop, and the humans have to work out a schedule to share it so that everybody gets their fair shot at things. I am glad the tablet is kitty sized, though touch screens can be tricky if you have paws instead of fingers. Anty is looking at other laptops that might be better to use than trying to navigate among several computers that can each do part of the job. We will keep you updated on that search. It is going to take a lot of hunting, but things will calm down when that is settled.

One good thing that has happened in all of this is that Anty has discovered Game of Thrones. That is the TV series, not the books, at least not yet. She and Mama have started calling me their direcat. I do not know exactly what that entails, (hah, see what I did there? Entails? Because I have a tail.) but I did find this sigil generator, and I made my own sigil:

If you want to make your own sigil, too, the generator I used is here. If you do make your own sigil, for yourself, or your pet, or maybe your characters, if you write, please feel free to share a link to what they look like in the comments. Anty would love to see them.

My favorite episode so far is “The Pointy End,” because that is the episode where a kitty got away from a young human who was chasing him. I am very proud of that kitty. That was some good running. I should note that this is not a show for gentle viewers who do not like to see Bad Things happen, or Very Private Things, either. Anty is not phased. She knows it is pretend, and she likes stories with very high stakes. She says she knows this show is in the fantasy genre, but it feels more like historical fiction to her. I can see where she gets that. She did not like what happened to Lady, and she would really like to see more romance (and not between siblings, thank you) but it is still a very good story so far, and makes her want to see more of an epic feel in historical romances, because she would very much like to write something like that in historical romance.

First, though, she would like to take a nap. That will probably not happen for a while, since she has a lot of writing to do. That is not always easy when the machines on which she writes are giving her guff, as Uncle calls it. Anty says that having notebooks helps her a lot in this regard, because they only crash if they fall off the table. The worst that can happen then is that she will lose her place, but that is usually easy to fix, because that is usually where the writing stops. Unless she was transcribing, and then it might get trickier, but she does like to change ink colors for every session, so if she knows she was on pages written in red ink, that narrows things down when she needs to find her place again. That is very useful when she has to stop to tend to domestic tornadoes or feed me or other important stuff like that.

One good thing about technology is that the camera cord came in the mail today. That means that there will be new pictures of me, and probably also of ducks (Anty says that the ducklings are teenagers now; the girls have blue stripes under their wings and the boys have green heads. There are more girls than boys, if you are counting.) and probably notebooks, too. Anty has a stack of Picadilly notebooks she would like to hack, but she needs to do some more writing first. When a writer has been dealing with other things, even if they are very important,then the writer will miss writing, and they may get grumpy and short tempered. In those cases, it is best to tread carefully and let them do what they need to do. Giving kitties treats also helps, I have found. At least it helps me. People snacks probably will help the writer, too.

Sharing one laptop among three humans and one kitty means that we only get a certain amount of time to use it, and that is about it for my time right now. Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

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

Until next week…

Roadblocks and Detours, pt 1

June 24, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

I’m intoxicated and turned on by people who are really honest about themselves.

-Neil Patrick Harris

This is not the entry I’d originally planned on, which fits the theme rather well. I am writing now on Housemate’s laptop, because mine now flat out refuses the internet except on increasingly rare occasions. I wrote the actual entry for today on that computer, put it on jump drive and planned to to a really easy copy and paste, only…there’s always an only…there is no Word on this computer. Wordpad refuses to cooperate, and there’s gobbeldygook before and after the actual document. I know when to give up on things like this, because I have enough crazy in my life and want to save some brain for actual writing.

I’d thought of bringing up the window and retyping the original post here, but I’m not going to do that, because, well, I don’t want to. This is my space where I can talk about what writing is like for me, and right now, it’s aggravating. I don’t want to retype what I already wrote. Going over and over and over the same thing because I once put those words on the digital page and therefore am obligated to…no. Not doing that. Well, maybe in part, but I’ll paraprhase, because I am cranky.

Paying attention, this year, to my own process, not what “should” work or what others think I “should” be doing, but what actually works for me (and by that, I mean gets and keeps me writing) has reminded me that, when something doesn’t work for me, that’s because it’s not right for me. Not that it or I am wrong or bad, but merely that square pegs do not fit in round holes, and no amount of pounding and cursing and forcing is going to make that happen. Put the square peg in the square hole, round peg in round hole, and we can all get on with our days, happier and more productive, and with a lot less cursing. Probably.

There’s a new session of Camp NaNo going on (coming up?) and…I will not be camping. Am not camping? Either way, for me, it’s a no this time, because Her Last First Kiss needs me exactly where I am, on the floor with my legal pads and sticky notes, elbow-deep in the guts of a story and cast of characters that are taking me on the sort of adventure I’ve wanted to get back into for years. Breaking up the fallow ground of what a story “should” be and letting the characters lead me. Taking a shovel to that ground and digdigdigdigdigdigdigdigdig until I hit the vein of the story, of the characters, of the journey we’re going on together.

It’s an interesting one, to be sure. Wrangling domestic tornadoes and dealing with persnickety electronics remind me how much I want this, and exactly what I am willing to do to get this story, and the novella, all the way to The End and out in the hands of readers. Some of those things are things I didn’t expect.

I’m not reading a lot of historical romance at the moment, which bothers me, but doesn’t. I am inhaling a ton of realistic YA, my story brain craving the deep emotions and intimate voices. I’ve seen four episodes of the first season of Game of Thrones, which makes my heart sing and do happy dances from the sheer beauty, the high stakes, the fact that nobody is safe and nobody is nice and the story world is wide, wide open for anything to happen. I still prefer my romantic couples not to have met in the womb, but watching this gets me excited and invigorated. I want that energy to carry over to historical romance, those rough edges, the sense of high emotional stakes and a grand scale. This morning, I finished reading We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, and wow. Brilliant, brilliant book, and, though it absolutely has its feet in a contemporary setting, it read like a historical, a little brown about the edges. GoT has the same feel for me; yes, it’s fantasy, but it “reads” like historical for me, and that’s where I’m watching from when I go into it.

All of these things go into the idea soup that feeds what I’m working on now, and what I’ll be working on after that. I need to take in what I mean to put out, easy as that. Trying to please every reader is not going to work out, but pleasing my readers? That, I can do. So I do what I know works for me. I write in layers. I talk. I have big furry messes of sticky notes and legal pads and cross things out and write things in and oh no, well, that changes everything, let’s backtrack and get it right…and that’s where the magic happens. I’m not beating my head bloody against a brick wall, but telling my stories, my way, and that’s actually fun. Even if I have to jump around among four machines to get a single document into gear. I know why I’m here; I’m a storyteller, and the stories need to get from my head to readers’, so that’s going to happen, whatever roadblocks present themselves.

I like to write a lot about identity, about characters who get to a place where they don’t let others tell them who to be, but find confidence and strength in who they actually are, who they actually were all along. Works for me.

Critical Mess

June 8, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

You just write everything down that you can dream up about the story. Don’t worry if the early drafts don’t make sense. You need to write and write until you understand the characters and what wonderful and horrible experiences they’re having, as well as what their relationships are like and how all those things change their lives. Once you’ve nailed that down, start revising so that the scenes unfold in a logical and satisfying order.
-Laurie Halse Anderson

Monday morning is here again, and that means another week of wrangling the big fuzzy mess of what’s in my head into some semblance of order. Today’s quote speaks to me deeply, because that’s where I am in the writing of two different projects. Characters and relationships and backstories and settings and people and places and things and all of that good stuff bubbles around in the cauldron of my mind, the characters begin to trust me enough to tell me that they’d really rather not X, thank you; they’ll Y instead, and I get an urge to put all of this mess in order. I’ve only recently discovered Laurie Halse Anderson, first through her amazing YA, The Impossible Knife of Memory, where teen heroine Hayley has to navigate her way through her single dad’s PTSD after he returns from military service, and, from the first page, I was knocked flat on my back with her use of language and emotion. Definitely stuff I would like to have flavor my own work. Finding out that she also has historical fiction, set in a period adjacent to the events of Her Last First Kiss both excites and frightens me a little, so I am only going to peek at those books on the library shelves through my splayed fingers for a while.

Shoulds are formiddable enemies. We don’t always know where they come from, but we know the stark terror they can bring about in a writer, the paralyisis, and even the death of perfectly good characters, plot points and even entire books, because, well, things should go like ABC, and this thing I’m working on here doesn’t, so…yeah…better put that away. Be a good little do-bee and follow the crowd, because all those publishers and all those readers and all those industry insiders must be right. I’m not sure if Shoulds are more like walkers from The Walking Dead or white walkers from Game of Thrones (maybe both? I’m only now getting into GoT; late adopter, I know.) They tell us we have to follow Big Name Writer’s process to the letter, when, really, we don’t, because we aren’t Big Name Writer. Maybe we’re not even in the same genre. We don’t come from the same place, geographically, psychologically, or what have you, so, really, it’s a ridiculous assumption to say that one size fits all. It doesn’t. I keep saying that because I keep needing to hammer it into my own head. Tough lesson to learn, but an important one.

This past week, the heroine for HLFK revealed something about herself that I hadn’t taken into consideration, but it makes perfect sense, makes her more interesting and makes writing this book feel a lot less murky. I think this might be my week for my hero to make a similar relevation, and I hope he does. That would make my job a lot easier. Though I’ve usually said I’m a plotter when asked if I’m a plotter or a pantser, I have learned that I need to take a third option. I’m a puzzler. Everything comes at me in one big blob of stuff, and I scramble to get it all down. In the past, I’ve felt I should have all my ducks in a row in my head before a single word hits the page, but now I know that I don’t work that way. I need the mess. I revel in the mess. I thrive in the mess.

I’ve been afraid of the mess, because it’s big, and, well, messy, and I like order. Which is okay. I can let the mess reach critical mass, then step back and start sorting it into some logical sense of order. Events fall into chronological order, which means a timeline will probably be useful, and actions have reactions, which spawn more actions, and on and on until we reach the end. The most useful piece of writing advice I’d recieved for many years was that a story can be defined as a character’s journey from wanting something to either getting it or realizing that they will never get it. When one of those things happens, then the story is over. Since I write romance, that usually means my hero and heroine are going to get that thing they want. Even if they don’t, they get something better, and, of course, they get each other. If they have each other, they can get through anything.

This is the part of the process where the magpie has most of the stuff in her nest (most of it; there will always be gathering) and now it’s time to put it all in order. I won’t lie; I wish I could get an idea and bloop, put it all on the page, exactly as is, in a set number of words per day (because, man, is that a hard Should to shed) but that’s not me. I need to splash around in the shallows, grab some of this and some of that and what-am-I-even-doing and oh-that’s-what-I’m-doing and there comes the moment when all falls in line, and yes, that’s right. Now make story.

Will do, brain. Will do.

Paddling Along (and avoiding toxic Shoulds)

June 3, 2015June 3, 2015annabowling 2 Comments

Plot springs from character… I’ve always sort of believed that these people inside me- these characters- know who they are and what they’re about and what happens, and they need me to help get it down on paper because they don’t type.
– Anne Lamott

Yesterday was not the best writing day I ever had, but it got me excited about writing in general, and Her Last First Kiss in particular. Yesterday was one of those days that wouldn’t. We all have them. If you think you haven’t, wait. They will come. I’d had time on my schedule blocked out for HLFK work, and that was all I could do in that time. Only problem was…nothing.

Opened Scrivener. Yep, those are my words on the screen, and those people do live in my head, but we sat there and blinked at each other, shifting uncomfortably in our seats, answering “what are we doing here today?” with “I was hoping you knew.” Doesn’t matter who said what, when, because it went both ways. Well, okay then, we’ve hit that moment. One of the best parts about relearning my own writing process is learning to recognize the old bugaboos that have stopped too many stories in their tracks. Rolling along, hit a bump or even a wall, and then, well, let’s back up a bit. What went wonky?

Now that I have my office hours blocked out, it’s easier to focus. If it’s not going to be a writing day, it can be a research day. That, too, was a blank, because I’m still figuring out how I research. Leafing through factual history books doesn’t always work, because I end up face down, snoring, all too often. I want to be in that world and feel it all around me. I want the senses of the time, what my individual characters would notice and what would affect their moods, thoughts, choices, etc. That’s because they are in the driver’s seat. They live their lives, I follow them around, sometimes picking up the cryptic breadcrumblike clues they leave in their wake, hoping I’m smart enough to figure it out, though they don’t yet trust me enough to tell me the real stuff and wait for me to puzzle things together.

Yesterday was one of those days. I set up a Pinterest board (private, because all WIP boards have to be private or I lose the scent) which consisted of a couple of character pictures (I don’t normally cast stories, but if a face goes with a character, that’s fine,too) and..ummm…what ele? Clothes, I guess? A house? I am not good at this sort of thing, people. I feel like I should be, but there we are at the toxic shoulds again. Historical romance is my natural writing home, so I should be into research, right? I love books, so I should get all excited about paging through dusty tome after dusty tome until I find the exact umm…something…that will get all my ducks in a row and eh, what were we talking about again? I got distracted. I feel like I should want to read more historical biographies (even the fictionalized ones can be problematic) because isn’t the best way to find out what it was like for someone to live at that time to, I don’t know, read books about actual people who did live at that time? For some, yes. For me, not so much.

There was a time when I would have shaken my finger at my own reflection and scolded myself for this. Something like “bad researcher, no accuracy for you.” I once went on a research trip with two other writer friends to Mystic Seaport. They quite happily settled into the research library, made use of the staff to find books on the events they needed. I thought the library was gorgeous, but weren’t the walls closing in? Oh, just me? Okay. I had to get out. Had to. I didn’t crack a single book that I can recall, but to this day, I remember what it was like to wander the deserted streets of that seaport in the chill gray air and the bracing wind. I still have broken seashells that I scavenged from the shore and stuffed in my pockets. I still remember being the only person in the shipyard, breathing in deep of the scents of salt and sap and sawdust, placing my hand on the ribcage -because that’s what it looked like- of a boat that had been built before my grandfather had been concieved and knowing, knowing why a character in the ms I was working on at the time loved the sea as much as he did and why another wanted to build ships more than anything else in the world. They met me there, and I count that research enough.

Should I have stayed in the library and researched like the others? Debatable. I didn’t know what facts or records I needed for that story (still don’t, which could be one of the reasons that ms is at rest) but I did know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, while walking those empty streets, that I was in the world of Miranda Jarrett’s Sparhawks (okay, maybe a few decades off, but still…) When the wind slammed a heavy glass door into my shoulder when I decided to go into a building and look at an exhibit on …umm, something to do with ships….the pain wasn’t as as strong as “cool, now I know what this feels like. I can describe this.” That got me excited. That’s the way I want to approach research, because that’s what works for me.

I broke for lunch yesterday, after time spent pinning stuff that could have sort of maybe been somewhat related to my people and went to lunch with Housemate. She, kind soul, let me babble, and then dropped a solid gold bomb on me. Well, of course I was stuck on what Heroine would do. Heroine doesn’t like X. She likes Y. Oh. Y. Why didn’t I think of that? So, I gave Heroine Y in my head and darned if she didn’t react totally differently to Plot Point. Okay. I can work with that. She’s dropping breadcrumbs again, and so I must be off.

Typing With Wet Claws: Office Development Edition

May 15, 2015May 15, 2015annabowling 2 Comments

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

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…

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

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.)

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:

and on the outside:

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…

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

Office Hours, aka Day Camp of the Mind

May 14, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

On my own, I found my place outside the lines.
–Kathleen Bittner Roth

Sometimes, a writer has to bust out. This morning, I escaped the loving bosom of my family and headed for the park, to set up a temporary office on the picnic table beside the lake. I’ve learned that I need to know what I’m doing, and that writing things down means I can put the giant jumble of ideas in my head in some sense of order and then prioritize. This all made sense out in the open air, looking at ducks between bullet points, but now that I am inside and should be able to focus, my brain wants to wander.

getting my ducks in a row…

One of the reasons I’m here right now is that I am committed to blogging three times a week, and if I put off posting until the weekend (after Skye’s post tomorrow) I will be fried. That’s not going to do anybody any good, so I will probably talk all around Robin Hood’s barn, as a high school English teacher used to say (ignoring the fact that Robin Hood did not have a barn; he was an outlaw who lived in the woods, ahem. Maybe he had a barn back at Locksley, but he’s over that now, and it wouldn’t have been one of his priorities, anyway. Now, where was I?) before I get to the point, if indeed there is one. Until then, there are waterfowl. My trip to the park yesterday netted me a peek at the first babies of the season. The Canada geese have spawned, three fuzzy yellow bebehs. The parents wasted no time in letting me know that picture time was over as soon as I got this shot.

Goslings!

I hadn’t expected to make such a connection, but as I settled in at the picnic table, with notebook and pen (after finding out that the sun made it impossible to see much on my tablet screen) it hit me why I liked working from the park in the morning as much as I do. It reminds me of day camp. Odd connection to make, but there it was. Maybe it was the travel mug full of Diet Coke talking, or maybe it was the chance to be seated on weathered wood, under the shelter of shady branches, immersed, as I often was during those long-ago day camp summers. I hated sports, largely because I was A) sun sensitive (still am) and B) nearsighted (still am) and I never fit in with most of the other kids. There was Them and there was me, and no matter how much I wanted to join in, I could never quite make the edges of the puzzle come together. Either I’d hang with the counselors (I was always more comfortable with adults, even as a kid) or I’d stay by myself.

If I couldn’t fit in with my real life peers (though, really, were they?) then I would create them in my head. I didn’t know that was writing, then, and I was surprised and perplexed to learn that not everybody did it. I loved Barbie dolls because they were, to me, tiny actors who never objected to my choice of costumes, roles or situations. Finally, a way to give faces and bodies to the voices in my head. I still remember my parents’ befuddlement when the first thing I did with my Jane and Johnny West action figures (12 inch, fully articulated cowgirl and cowboy) was make them reenact the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. (Signs your kindergartener will grow up to be a historical romance writer for one hundred, Alex.)

I didn’t bring dolls to day camp; I knew enough to do that, but when our counselors took us to the outdoor sunken basketball court and explained their variation on Red Rover, involving an orgre who lived beneath the blacktop and could come out of the storm drain, I soaked that like a sponge and created a princess who wanted to escape the ogre’s clutches, and what was supposed to be normal kids-running-around stuff became a mix of Nordic myth, various fairytales (not the sanitized Brothers Grimm version, not this girl) and probably some mix of whatever cartoon had held my interest at the time. When it came time to head to the pool for swimming, there were mermaids or a trip to Atlantis. A good deal of the time, I didn’t notice when the other kids didn’t want to play because I had friends who lived in my stories. Best of all were the times when I’d find a kindred soul and could entice them to play along.

It’s somewhat like that now, when I head to the park. The characters in my WIPs tag along, and, if I’m meeting reistance in a scene or a concept, it’s usually that I’m trying to force the characters to do something they wouldn’t. While we take a loop around the lake, in search of waterfowl, sipping a cold drink from our travel mug, or set up shop at the picnic table, the restraints fall away. The walls come down, as it were. I’m not sure if this is because the great outdoors is a good equalizer, and more familiar to my historical people than a recliner or ergonomic chair and blinking cursor on a blank screen, but I can’t discount it.

Even in those day camp years, my default story setting was the long ago and usually far away. I can’t explain it, other than the fact that I’m hardwired for historicals. The British Isles thing, I can maybe explain; our closest neighbors when I was little were a lovely Scottish couple, and my mom’s best friend was a British expat. I soaked in the accents and the mannerisms, the folk tales and other bits that I’m sure I didn’t even realize, and they became part of me, part of the worlds I created when the physical one didn’t fit. Some things, I am happy to report, never change.

‘ello, ducks…

Conference Recap, Part the Second: Saturday

April 30, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

Note to self: take more pictures next year.

view from our room

Spring is absolutely on here in the northeast, and perfect atmosphere for day two of NECRWA 2015. Though Friday certainly has its share of workshops, Saturday has always felt like Workshop Day to me, and this year did not disappoint. First, though, allow me to state that conference breakfasts with endless tea are basically Extroverted Morning Person Disneyland. Caffiene! Breakfast food! People who want to talk about what I want to talk about! Free book on my plate! :runs about room, trailing streamers:

breakfast food breakfast food breakfast foooooood

By this time, the usual suspects had formed an entourage, and most of us ended up at the same table to continue the conversations of the night before, with some new blood injected, business cards handed around and schedules compared. If I’d had a parrot on my shoulder for this weekend, a) that would have been an awesome icebreaker, and b) the first phrase he would have learned would have been “how many seats am I saving?” because traveling to workshops en masse is fun. I will not mention at which workshop somebody I have hung out with at more than one conference spilled coffee on me, but no staining occured, so all is well in that department.

First workshop of the day was Susan Vaughn‘s presentation on the conflict box, which was a new concept for me, and an intriguing one. Biggest takeaway there was to have hero and heroine’s actions each drive the other’s conflict. :rubs hands together and cackles with glee: I think I can have some fun with that.

I’ve seen Megan Ryder‘s presentation on storyboarding before, and jumped at the chance to see it again. Okay, the use of sticky notes was a big draw. I bought a trifold board for this exact purpose after seeing Megan present this a while back, and was interested to see if there would be any new information this time around. Sillly Anna, of course there was. The mere idea of drawing a permanent chart on the board gives me the heebie-jeebies. I’d rather slap the sticky notes up there willy-nilly and then put them in order as they start to make sense, which, as it turns out, is a perfectly fine way to handle things. Of course I knew that, but it’s always good to have reinforcement. Also, I need to buy more sticky notes, because shapes and colors.

After that, it was time to hear from Jackie Horne, another NECRWA chapter sister, on using the Meyers-Briggs personality typing system to build not only characters, but plot romantic arcs. I love any sort of personality typing, as I’m definitely character-led, so hearing how to use this to enhance the love relationship kept me on the edge of my seat. Breaking down personality types into four different functions, ranked from lead to least got my idea hamster running like crazy on its wheel. How to use each character’s personality to find out what both attracts them to their true love and how their true love drives them crazy? Right up my alley. I’ll be using this a lot.

As the lovely Melva was in high demand and her presence required at another engagement, I was not able to attend Gail Eastwood‘s presentation on author voice, another topic I could talk about endlessly, but, through the magic of networking, my luncheon seatmate happened to be a friend of Gail’s and asked if I’d like her to ask if I could have the notes. Mention angels and one appears – Gail happened by to say hi, we explained things, and she graciously agreed to email me her notes and the handouts. Very much looking forward to those.

All too soon, it was time to go, but, as so often happens, a seed was planted. Melva and I had started talking while waiting for breakfast, and before too long, a novella idea had formed. I haven’t collaborated with another writer in a very long time, but once the ideas started, they kept on coming. Melva and I would both blurt out the same thing at the same time, and that’s how I come to today’s featured picture. My first assignment was to write down all the stuff we’d brainstormed at meals and the car ride back. As the plethora of sticky notes shows, there was quite a bit. Stay tuned for updates.

Now, how long until next year?

Traditional post-conference sundae

Typing With Wet Nails

for the love of romance

inspiration