Plannering

December 31, 2014annabowling 2 Comments

Monday’s entry on Wednesday, that’s not too bad. Last time this year I’ll be off schedule, I promise. Since today is New Year’s Eve, I am fairly certain I can keep that promise. As for the year ahead, well, that’s still an open -and unwritten- book. Actually, a few of them.

2014 was one of the interesting years, and I am not sorry to see it go. 2015 is full of opportunity. I intend to make the best of it. Not making resolutions this year. Goals, yes. Making those, and keeping track of things in notebooks and planners is definitely part of that.

Though 2014 had its surprises, one of the good ones was me falling in love with Paperblanks notebooks, via my 2014 planner. That’s the green one above, reproduced from a 19th century French silk textile design (I would so get the regular notebook in that design, but I’m picky about closures, and the closure on the pocket size makes no sesnse) It’s paired with my 2015 planner, in my new Paperblanks design crush, the silver filigree, aka “The Precious.”

That’s the entire Precious family to date – planner is in onyx, aka Badass Precious because it’s the tough one. Baby Boy Precious is the blue one, and the first one to come home; I knew right away that was to be the pocket notebook for the new historical, and started it as such. That is going to get a small adjustment as his sister (yes, some of my notebooks have genders) Baby Girl Precious was my Christmas gift to me. I wasn’t sure what to do with her at first, but getting the whole family together, it became clear; Baby Boy gets hero notes and Baby Girl gets heroine notes. Appropriate, because one of my goals (see, goals, not resolutions) is to know the hero and heroine of this book inside out so I do not flounder and we do not end up blinking at each other halfway through the book and wander off in our separate directions. That is so last year. Last several, actually, but moving right along…

The ultimate goal is to nab the desk sized version of Baby Boy, aka Big Daddy Precious. If there is a Big Mama Precious, she is, of course, welcome. Still needed a desk sized notebook because writing in pocket sized all the time makes my hands cramp, so in the meantime, I am drafting this lovely notebook that was a birthday present from my lovely housemate:

This book -oh heck, the working title is Her Last First Kiss– is not an inspirational romance (it’s historical) but when the right notebook calls out, I am going to use that notebook. Colors coordinate with Baby Boy (and someday Big Daddy) so the association is easy to make.

But those are notebooks, not planners, even if what they mostly contain right now is plans for the 2015 book. Whatever works, right? Right now, I want to write in these with fountain pens, to which I am fairly certain I can become addicted to in short order. Appropriate for a historical writer, I say. Microns will do if I find myself without a fountain pen, but first choice right now is the Pilot Varsity.

As for calendars, this one will be adorning my office wall for the next twelve months:

I knew I had to have it as soon as I saw it on the rack at Barnes and Noble, as it fit oh so well with the notebooks below:

Different manufacturers, but same feel, and my brain says they all smell like baby powder, even though they do not. That would be the images smell like baby powder, not the notebooks.

For those wondering if I ever managed to destink Skye’s notebook, I am letting the baking soda sit for one extra day to be extra extra sure, and then finding out.

aoon, we will know…

What planners/notebooks are starting out your new year?

Typing With Wet Claws: Six Days to Christmas Edition

AsideDecember 19, 2014December 19, 2014annabowling 2 Comments

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

Anty really needs me to blog for her today, because it is six days until Christmas. She says she has been running around in circles, screaming, but that is not entirely what is going on. She has been spending time on the glowy box, and writing in her notebooks. Also making a lot of lists, because lists help her feel calmer and more in control. I wish I could make lists, but hiding under the bed does the trick pretty well, so I am okay most of the time.

Anyway, Anty has hit the critical stage for Christmas. That is her favorite day of the year. Normally, she is very happy about this from the time we are done with Thanksgiving dinner, but this year, not so much. Life is good, but there have been a lot of domestic tornadoes. Anty being Anty, she has a plan to work around this. Some of it involves making a lot of lists. She says she is not putting her lists on this blog, so I cannot share them, but she says I can share other parts of her plan.

What Christmas movies are missing from this picture?

Christmas movies are a big part of getting into the holiday spirit in our house. Uncle likes Elf, but we do not have that one. It is still good, though. Anty likes Love Actually so much that she has the book of it; that is in script form, not a novel, which she finds unusual and very fun. Yes, she has read along with the movie, in case you were wondering about that. She also can say Billy Mack’s whole swear line from memory and thinks it is very creative. She might not like me saying that, so maybe do not share that part. Thank you in advance for your discretion.

About a Boy counts because it is not a Christmas movie, but has two important Christmas scenes, and she says that is enough to qualify. It is also by Nick Hornby, and Anty really really likes his stories. She thinks he should write more books. She has already read all the ones there already are, so she needs more.

Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol is the first movie Anty ever saw in a theater. It was not new then, so you cannot tell how old she is by that. She does say she felt cheated because the first thing she saw in that movie was the curtains opening to show theater seats. That was confusing to a human kitten. She still loves it, though, even if nobody else in the family will watch it with her. She would eat razzleberry dressing if it were real.

Anty did not want to see The Holiday at first, but her friend, Carol, said it was good, so she watched it and now she loves it almost as much as Love Actually. Only almost. Maybe if it had Hugh Grant, it would rank higher, but it does have Jude Law. Uncle does not like Hugh Grant, but Jude Law is okay. He has Jude Law’s Sherlock movies, but they are not about Christmas.

She took the Charlie Brown movie out of the library yesterday, because if that couldn’t get her in the Christmas spirit, nothing could. I think it is working, and she has not even seen it yet. This time, I mean. She has seen it a lot before.

What other Christmassy books are good this time of year?

When Anty is not on her glowy box, in a notebook or watching a movie, she finds Christmas stories are very good this time of year. She loves Christmas romance anthologies (do you know any good ones?) and, although she did not know it, Landline starts at Christmas. She says that is coincidence, but I think there may be something more than that going on. It is the season of miracles, after all.

Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

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

Time, Place, and Billy Joel

December 15, 2014annabowling Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NaNot Ramblings: Clearing the Dust

November 20, 2014annabowling Leave a comment

This is my third time attempting to write this blog entry, on my old desktop in the office of our current apartment. Part of reclaiming my writing is reclaiming my office. First thing on my list today was to turn off the ceiling fan in the office, which required getting up on the kitchen stool, one hand braced against the semi-opened office door and having fuzzy gray dustbunny babies rain down upon me. Not something I would like to repeat in the near future, but it was a neccessary step.

Basic truth; if I’m going to get any work done in my office, it needs to be a room that I want to inhabit. It can’t be for storage. Storage took over my office in the old apartment, and climbing over boxes of books and other essentials took some of the appeal out of the process. Things had started to go in that direction here, but no time like the present to put my foot down and break the pattern. Maybe the old writer was willing to go through that. The writer I am now is not. I want and need and deserve a dedicated place where I can go, shut the door and enter into my story world. Hence the orange Post-it note that reads ‘writing cave.’

I do a lot of work in public, at the local coffee house or nearby Panera, but the desire for my own office, set up to my specifications, rose within me this week, and it’s time. As easy as that. Not that this is going to be easy, because I’m going to have to figure out what to do with the boxes that should not have made it onto the moving van. I do not serve the office; the office serves me, so what will make me want to be in this room the most and get the most done? There were nights, long nights, in the old office, when I didn’t care that it was too hot or too cold, because this was my space and there were stories that had to come out of me and onto the page, so a little discomfort was no big deal.

Here, I am comfortable. I am happy. I am healthy. I am having fun learning this new me and seeing what the new office she will inhabit will look and feel like. The best way I’ve found, at least for me, is to jump in and do. Hence this entry. My laptop, which has become my main computer, is set up in the living room, at the other end of the house. I will take it down after lunch, when I head to the coffee house, and work on the day’s scene. First, though, I’m getting myself reacquainted with working in here. The vintage burlap bulletin board is going to need some help. It took itself down a few weeks back, and that gave me the opportunity to see that the random things I had pinned to that board don’t reflect what I’m doing now as well as they could. Still figuring out what will do that trick. Maybe the board needs to go back up with new things upon it, maybe it needs to be retired and replaced with something new. I don’t know yet.

What I do know is that I am sitting now at the antique secretary desk I had coveted since childhood. I am sitting in the ergonomic chair that I bought with my own money from one of my old retail jobs. I remember how proud I was, walking out of Office Max with that cardboard box clutched awkwardly in my arms, taking it home and upstairs and figuring out how to put it together. Then sitting in it, behind the big metal desk we’d acquired through souces I do not now recall, and telling myself this was my space and I would honor it and keep it. I didn’t do that great, but y’know, those years weren’t that great, so it’s okay. I’m here now. I don’t have to keep the dust of another life if it doesn’t have anything to add to the life I am actually living. What I need to surround me are things that will feed the stories I write now. Some old, some new, some that blend the two in a new way I wouldn’t have been able to see before. Kind of exciting, that, and having a new/old place to write, that fits right in with the plan.

Typing With Wet Claws: Skye’s introduction

October 17, 2014annabowling 2 Comments

Skye O’Malley, the kitty, not the book.

Hello. I am Skye O’Malley, the kitty, not the book. My friend, Bailey, helps out his mom, Sue Ann Porter, with her blog, so he thinks that I should do the same thing. My mama does not write books or have a blog (she plays with strings that turn into sweaters and things,) but my Anty Anna does, so I will help her.

Most days, my mama and Uncle (Anty calls him Real Life Romance Hero) are out hunting, so Anty hunts from home. Usually, she’s on her glowy box, which looks like this picture below now, because she killed the first keyboard and then had to get a second one. That second one sits on top of the first, and sometimes tries to type things on that first keyboard on its own. I do not think she wants it to do that, but her characters do not always behave themselves either. Writers must be used to disobedience.

In case you want to know what it looks like where I work (I am a professional mews) this is what Anty sees when she looks away from her glowy box.

Workstation of the mews

Anty says not all of those notebooks are there all of the time, and they really are not. She does use a lot of paper, though. If I am a really good kitty, I get to play with some of it. I like to stay close in case Anty needs some inspiration, or wants to pet a kitty with her foot. In case she wants to feed a kitty, I am one, so it’s only considerate that I stay close by so she doesn’t have to go far. I like to think of myself as a very considerate kitty, so when Anty is home, I make sure to stay as close to her as possible. Unless it rains or I hear the cat zamboni (the people call it a street sweeper, but I know better) – then I am under Anty and Uncle’s bed.

In case you are wondering if Anty really does type some of these entries with wet nails, she really does. Her trick is to use only the pads of the fingers and not the actual nails. She says she learned that in high school and it still works. I love the smell of nail polish, so if she really is typing with wet nails, I am sure to be extra super close. I am calling my posts Typing With Wet Claws, but if my claws are wet, it is because I licked them. I am a very clean kitty.

Is that good for our first time together? Bailey said that first impressions are important.Hopefully, my posts will help Anty. She says if she sells a lot of books, I can get more toys. My favorite toys are Post-It notes that Anty is done using. I don’t think she is being entirely selfless by promising to buy more Post-Its, but it is worth a try.

Until next time,

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

Almost Like Being There

May 13, 2014May 13, 2014annabowling Leave a comment

Time for me to add the “Not at RT” tag to my entries, because it’s that time of year again, Romantic Times Book Reviews’ annual conference. When I first started this post, I began to blog about not being at RWA Nationals, but then remembered that’s in July, so I was missing out on something else entirely. I am going to take this as a sign that my head is in the books, and thus other things are going to slip out through the cracks.

The conference hangover is still strong from NECRWA, and my tea is from my lovely gift basket, its gorgeous peacock themed box now in its place of honor in my office. I’m working on two historicals at the moment, and some only-for-fun writing that serves no purpose but to make me happy on the side. Today, I have the apartment to myself, and am taking advantage of some excellent advice from the very talented K.A. Mitchell. In her presentation to CRRWA a few months back, she gave two gems: open the file, and change your seat. Maybe not in that particular order, but they work. I’m not stuck today, but got the urge to change my seat anyway, so am now seated at the kitchen counter. I don’t write at the counter much, but it’s a beautifully overcast day, the window that gives me a view of our neighbor’s window is open enough to catch a breeze and I’ll have a front row seat to the rain if we get any. There’s a thirty percent chance.

I’d love to be at RT, but this wasn’t my year. Some other year will be, and it will be the right one. I’m not feeling deprived this year, or that I’m missing out, which is new, but again, still have conference hangover, drinking conference tea, talking to conference friends, and my real life hero and I spent the weekend at the local Tulip Festival, so my people-meter is pleasantly full. Being around big groups of people, especially those who love what I love, energizes me and gives me a boost. That’s two boosts in two weekends, so time to spend some of that energy by writing.

I won’t be at RWA’s national conference, either. This year, Bertrice Small is getting a lifetime achievement award there, and, since she’s the reason I became a romance writer in the first place, if i could only attend one National conference in my life, that would be the one I’d pick. I knew, under my parents’ guest room brass bed, with my flashlight and my stolen-from-Mom’s-nightstand copy of The Kadin, that I’d found what I wanted to read and write for the rest of my life, so of course I’d love to be there to cheer with all the other fans, and witness a retrospective of a stellar career. I would love to see her son, Tom, accept the award on her behalf, charming, articulate and full of pride and love for his mother. I’d love to hang out with other Small fans and jabber about their favorite books of hers, un-favorite books of hers, and her influence on individual careers and the industry as a whole.

Thanks to the internet, I can peep along and read others’ experiences, see what they see, and if I want to talk favorite books or authors, there’s no end to the opportunities for that, either singly or in groups. For lovers of all forms of historical romance, I’ll slip in a plug for my own Facebook group, The Lion and Thistle. Thanks to all the people who live in my head, there are stories yet to write, to keep me plenty busy while the conference and the rest of life are going on, so that, no, I do not feel deprived at all this year. That’s new, and I think I like it.

Typing With Wet Nails

for the love of romance

inspiration