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Strange Hunger

annabowling Leave a comment

Monday’s post on Wednesday this week, which means Wednesday’s post has to happen on Thursday, or it will bump into Skye’s  post on Friday, or get shuffled into the weekend. I am not up for that, so today it will be. That pretty much fits with the rest of the day, because I woke feeling like what Skye would term “stuff.” Not coming down with a cold, as far as I know, but body wanted to stay in bed, but that warred with the fact that it was already morning, with the sun risen and everything, and that I was so much in need of bathing that my body was likely to get up and wash itself without me. So, no more bed.

Question then was, what came next? #linewed on Twitter is a given, but that didn’t have to be right away, so attention turned next to this entry. After the last time I carried a Wednesday post for what seemed like forever, I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again, because it bothers me, and this blog is not about bothering, it’s about finding my way through this writing life. Since the calendar, and Facebook memories, reminded me that this is Real Life Romance Hero’s and my falling-in-love-iversary (yes, we do know the exact day, and yes, it was the same day for both of us)  I thought I’d blog about that, but I was already ahead of myself, because I already did, last year, right here:

https://annacbowling.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/happily-ever-after-epically-speaking/

Well, okay then. I dove into an assignment for an art journaling class I’m taking, instead, and, when I looked next at the time, it was almost lunch. How the heck did that happen? Granted, I had actually tackled two assignments, which successfully jump started another part of my brain. I used supplies I hadn’t used in a long time, gessoed over a background I hated and made the page something else entirely, taking a different approach than I’d originally planned, stuck a sticky note over part of the page I wanted to keep private, even when I did share my work with the class, and that’s when it happened. New stuff, that’s what my brain wanted. That’s what’s going to plug the hole in the creative well and let me actually fill the darned thing.

I won’t be playing hooky exactly, but more going on a mission of discovery. There are a couple of tasks that can’t be put off for another day (nor do I want to) but they are also portable tasks, so, really, technically, I can do them anywhere. Regular coffee house haunt, maybe, or library, or park, or downtown coffee shop I’ve always looked at when we drive past it, but have never actually been inside the place. Other park I’ve only been to once. Our own balcony. Some other place I haven’t even thought about yet.

One of my all time favorite pieces of advice is from author K. A. Mitchell, that the best ways to combat block are to open the file (or notebook) and change your seat. Today is a seat changer. I need different stimuli. Reds, yellows and oranges on the trees instead of green everywhere. Cooler air on my skin. Different tastes in my mouth. Different voices around me while I focus on the page or screen in front of me. It’s been said, that if we want something we’ve never had, we have to do things we’ve never done. I’ve written books before, so that isn’t exactly it, but I haven’t written this book before, so I think that counts. Still getting used to dancing on a couple of phantom limbs, stretching a few creative muscles, and the outer change of seasons matches what’s going on in the inside, so I am calling all of that good.

Time, then, to pack up my stuff, take my show on the road and see where the spirit and my two feet take me. Sometimes, the journey is the whole point. Maybe I’ll find a new favorite something, or maybe all that’s going to happen is that I tick the items off my to-do list, which is exactly what would happen if I stayed within the same four walls. Today isn’t a same four walls day, though. Today is a day for filling strange hungers, so off I go.

This Book Now

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We have a new toilet. Probably not the most exciting thing to start off a blog entry, and no, you do not get a picture, but that took up my early afternoon, which is why I’m only getting to write this post now, and why I’m writing it from the, ah, comfort of my own home, instead of from the coffee house, and yes, I am itchy over that. Thwarted extrovert here, but Skye kitty is doing her best, and Housemate will be home soon, to watch Ink Master, so there’s that. There is also writing.

Five days from now, I will start a new morning pages book. That would be the purple one in today’s picture. Current book is the one with the face on it, and yes, I am already scouting out the notebook that will come after that one, because I really do want the alternating page spreads instead of the same pages every time. This will make my fifth notebook since I started doing morning pages, so I think it’s safe to say that this whole morning pages thing is working. Good to know.

Also good to know is that the current method of fumbling my way toward ecstasy, by which I mean leveling up to the next draft, because that is, in itself a form of ecstasy, is working. While dealing with the unique experience of a gentleman showing up at our door, taking out one commode and installing another, thus silencing the vuvuzela player in our basement, my brain was firmly in the eighteenth century. I’m about halfway through my notes on N’s notes, and ready to show this next draft who’s boss. (Hint: it’s me.) The stuff I figured out I’d figure out later (apart from the section that is still literally labeled “Hero Scene” with “vaguest note ever” – that’s still pretty much that, but since Heroine’s reaction to events at that stage of the game is X, his needs to be Y, so they are not even close to on the same page in this part. Nobody can be completely happy until the very end of the book, at which point, I literally throw my hands in the air, shout “HEA!” and cheer. Even in Panera. This may or may not have anything to do with the staff remembering my order without me having to say a word, but I’m not going to investigate it too closely.

Today was not the day I expected. I got to the Laundromat at a later point in the morning than I had intended, I didn’t get any reading done, and I do not want to speculate too much on the reason my favorite washing machine had that many feathers in it. I suspect it may have had something to do with down-filled clothing, pillows, or thrill-seeking chickens. Probably not the chickens, but one never knows. Plumber showed about four hours early, minutes after Real Life Romance Hero vacated the room Plumber needed for his work, and we now have the old toilet waiting on the curb for whatever its next destination will be. I have no idea how these things work, but that’s where it is. Wherever it goes from here is up to forces beyond my control.

What is within my control is how I write this book. Trust my gut. Trust my characters. Tell my story, the way it comes to me, and tell it until it’s told. For me, that comes in layers, enough of them to make a bookish baklava. When I look at the early parts of the story now, they feel a lot sketchier than the later parts, because I didn’t know the story or characters as well then as I do now. That only comes with time, with asking them why, and, more importantly, listening to their answers rather than trying to fill in the blanks by myself. There’s intuition and planning, and that funky space in the middle where it’s a little of both.

Here’s what I do know. I’m writing this book. I know where it starts, where it ends, and what happens in between. I know Hero and Heroine,  why they are both the worst person for the other to fall for, at the worst possible time,  and the very best person for the other in the end. I know it hasn’t taken the path I thought it was going to take right at the start, and I know it still has a few surprises for me before we’re done. I know this one is going to make it. I know I am back on the horse. I know there will be other books after this one, and I know I don’t need to concern myself with them at this point. I know they will present themselves, characters, setting, era and all, at the time I need them and not before. This book now. That may need to go on my wall.

 

Sprechen Sie Romance?

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Of course I have to start with the Post-Its. There is no such thing as too many Post-Its. if they come in their own holder, so that I can take them on the road, all the better. This particular specimen comes from a filing crate Housemate hauled out of the storage unit, because I am at the point of needing to print out drafts and mark them with colored pens and sticky notes (hence the Post-Its.) There is also a wheeled cart that goes with the filing crate, which also has file space, as well as storage for other things, so there will be archaeology and probably some paper shredding and then organization. This is all good stuff, and I am looking forward to setting off on this particular leg of the journey.

I already know I am not doing NaNoWriMo this year, though I will happily shake pompoms on the sidelines and cannot guarantee I won’t at least attempt to sneak into a write-in or two over the course of the month, but participating as such isn’t for me. I can count words or I can write the draft. I can’t do both. No guilt this year, no will I/won’t I or should I/shouldn’t I, because I’m doing the head down, eyes on my own paper thing. That tends to work better for me right now, keeps me motivated, and got me through an outline and bullet point daft, so I think it’s safe to say that’s likely to work for this phase as well.

Hypercritical Gremlins don’t seem to find this approach terribly interesting,  which I take as a good sign, because they’ve been quiet as of late, only the faintest muttering from the corners of their closet. This may  have had something to do with my reorganizing the notebooks I keep in said closet, but that’s beside the point. The point is, it’s Monday, it’s October, and my job, from now until lunch, is to look over the very first scene I wrote for Her Last First Kiss, which is now the second scene, first written, then taken out, now put back in, but needing some fairly major surgery to get it going.

I’m okay with that, and I’m not surprised. When I first wrote the scene, I didn’t know exactly where I was going. All I knew was that I had to get Hero onto the page, and I did, but I didn’t know him then, not the way I do now, because I hadn’t spent all that time with him yet. He certainly hadn’t opened up to me yet, so this poking-things-in-the-dark-with-a-long-pointy-stick approach isn’t that bad, all things considered, but there is significant room for improvement. Which is okay. This book is going the distance, so I’m not worried about that. I have my roadmap, I know where I’m going and how I’m getting there, so that makes it easier, when looking at what I’ve already written, to make the course corrections when needed.

One such correction goes into slightly scary territory (though that is kind of a theme for the month, so appropriate.) – I really do need a historical romance critique partner. This is historical romance, because that’s what I write. The love story is the story, and if I took it out of its particular setting, it would fall apart. This means I have to tread into asking for what I want territory, and that’s…I already said scary, so something else. Intimidating, maybe? No, not quite. I have writer friends I am close to, whom I love dearly, but historical romance isn’t their focus. One is on hiatus, for family reasons, another is no longer in my life, another lives two hundred miles away, others,whom I can see or speak to frequently, touch lightly on romance as an element of other genres, and… imagine gif of person flailing in open water here.

There’s a scene in the series finale of the Highlander TV show, where the hero, Duncan, follows one of the bad guys for I don’t even remember how long anymore, running through multiple languages while trying to get them to talk to him. Do they speak English? No? French? No? Spanish? No? Russian? No? Italian? No? How about Mandarin? Gaelic? Klingon? Okay maybe he didn’t try Klingon, I am very sure I got the languages and their orders wrong, and, since it was the series finale, he probably got them to some sort of resolution, because that’s all the time they had to resolve stuff, but I can identify, to some extent. RWA does have a critique partner matching thingityboo, and I will probably look into that, and yet…there’s still the hunger to sit in the same room with someone who speaks my native tongue, preferably same dialect.

Where is this going? Darned if I know, but what I do know is that I have a date with chapter two that was once chapter one, and I’ll figure things out as I go. I do my part, my imaginary friends do theirs. Now if I can only figure out how to get them to pick up the check when I take them out to the coffee house…..

Typing With Wet Claws: Mythical Vuvuzela Edition

annabowling 1 Comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. It is the end of September today, which means tomorrow is the start of October, when Anty’s super powers level up, and Anty does, too. Her birthday is later this month. Have I mentioned that Anty loves birthdays? They do not always have to be hers; she likes birthdays in general, but hers is one week before Halloween, which means there are lots of skull and bat themed things around. That means it is her time of year to get things she will use all year long. It also starts off the whole holiday season, from her birthday through Valentine’s Day (Anty has a very broad definition of “holiday season”) so that makes her happy.

What also makes her happy is having things written for me to tell you about before we get started. This week, there are two. On Buried Under Romance, Anty asks if it is possible for romance readers  to have too much of a good thing. That post is here: http://www.buriedunderromance.com/2016/09/saturday-discussion-too-much-of-a-good-thing.html and it looks like this:

bur300916

Is there such a thing as too many books?

 

Then, because it is the end of the month, the blogger humans at Heroes and Heartbreakers talk about their favorite reads of the month. This month, Anty’s choice was an easy one, because some books have that much of an impact. You can read about that, and the choices of other blogger humans (I do not think the editors asked any blogging cats, but maybe they will do that some other time) here: http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com/blogs/2016/09/hah-bloggers-recommend-best-reads-september-2016 and it looks like this:

handhbestseptember

Fun fact: Anty almost picked The Hunter, by Kerrigan Byrne, too.

Okay, that is enough of that. I have been working very hard as a mews this week. When Anty is at  her secretary desk, in her office, I sit outside the door and stare at her. I still do not know what to make of the carpet in there. It is different from the carpet in the bedroom (I love the carpet in the bedroom) and the hardwood floor that is in the other rooms (except for the bathroom, kitchen and hallway, which are linoleum.) I want to be as close to Anty as possible, especially when she is writing, and I am very interested in her new chair,  but that office carpet puts me off, so that is why I stay outside the door. If the carpet were gone, I would probably come in, but it has furniture on it. Maybe someday, the humans will move it; then we will see.

Anty is still vexed (that is an old timey word, vexed. It means bothered.) and confused by the printer. It says its paper tray is empty, but it is not empty, and then when Anty tries to print, it says the paper is jammed. So, which is it, empty or jammed? Mama says they should get a new printer, but Anty says they would have a perfectly good printer if they can convince it that it is neither empty nor jammed. They may have to take it to the computer doctor, because Anty is getting to the stage in both books where she needs to print out her chapters and write things on those pages with pens.

Part of that is because that is how Anty’s brain works best, and part of it is because of the way the people vet looked at Anty when she told him how many hours a day she spends looking at a computer screen. She is making an effort to do more non-screen things when she can, such as reading paper books and giving her eyes a break by looking at things that are more than an arm’s length away every ten to fifteen minutes. Since I like to sit exactly out of arm’s reach (in case there is a chance I might be picked up; I do not like being picked up and would rather stay on the floor) I am doing my part to keep Anty from eyestrain. When her eyes need a break, she can look at me. As long as she is looking at me, she can take a short walk (to my bowl) and feed me. I am looking out for her exercise needs as well. I take my mews duties very seriously.

Because Landlady Human sent her husband over with a ladder, so he could change the batteries in the smoke detectors, it is mostly quiet here now. I say mostly because Anty is using her headphones to listen to music right now, and because the chirping smoke alarms have been replaced by a vuvuzela player in the basement. I am kidding on that last part. We do not really have a vuvuzela player in the basement. One of our downstairs neighbors is a step dancer, though, and her troupe rehearses in the basement, but without vuvuzela accompaniment, as far as I know. The sound comes from air coming through our pipes, but the handyman human is working on that, so it will be quiet again soon.

Other than that, things are falling into place for what Anty hopes will be a productive autumn. She is making progress on Her Last First Kiss and the Beach Ball, and has several posts for Heroes and Heartbreakers in the works, which means she has a lot of reading to do. She likes all of those things, so that works out well. That is also about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

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

Bound By The Work We Started

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My new office chair is in place. Smoke detectors are done chirping and back to protecting our safety. Blog entry is next on my list of Things To Do, before I dive, with love and uncertainty, back into the actual writing and related tasks (of which blogging is assuredly one) and title comes from the Sting song that was playing when I opened WordPress today. Not a pop song, but a selection from probably the only-ever hit Broadway show about shipbuilding, The Last Ship. Probably only Sting could ever write a hit Broadway show about downtrodden shipbuilders reclaiming their moxie, but he’s Sting, so he can.

Yesterday, I hit a huge pit of gaming withdrawal. I don’t remember the last time I was able to boot Sims 3, and the missing it hit me, hard. Okay, a friend squealing over how great Fallout 4 looked on her new PlayStation may have had something to do with that. I tried booting Sims 3 but ye olde lapptoppe wouldn’t hold an internet connection long enough to boot, so that was out of the question. Still, I had the hunger. My work for the day was done. I needed to calm down from a couple of stress triggers, and I knew gaming would do the trick…which would be super helpful if I could actually boot my game.

Which was when the other thing hit me. I still had Sims Medieval (TSM) installed, and (thank you, organization) the CD was right at hand. Popped that puppy in, and, after a couple of false starts, boom, game. I knocked off a quest for my blacksmith in pretty short order, took some screenshots, and impressed myself with how much fun it was to get back to it, after al this time. Sims and a  historical environment should be a natural for me, and it is. Sure, there are some drawbacks, because it isn’t like real Sims. I can’t build, for one thing, and I have to do quests, rather than making my Sims live their lives (preferably in a custom neighborhood that looks like Levittown and Centralia somehow collided) but it felt good to play with some form of pixel people, and I hadn’t played since Origin installed the update, so there should be some new-to-me stuff.

There’s also the fact that it’s been so long that part of the game does feel like I’m playing it for the first time again, but I have enough experience from those long-ago quests that I’m not starting at zero, even if it feels like it. Rupert, my blacksmith, pictured above (he’s the dude; chick is Queen Sascha, who sent him on his quest) is now at level nine of his career, so he’s got some cred and swagger. Also a nifty assistant who does a bunch of his work for him, which is a big perk.

What does this all have to do with writing, one might ask? It’s okay. Go ahead. I did. Half the time I write these blogs, I don’t know where I’m going when I start, but if I do keep going, I usually figure it out, because I’m me, so I can. Aha. Kind of like Sting in that respect. All right, that may be the only thing Sting and I have in common. I am pretty sure I am never going to write a hit Broadway musical about shipbuilding (or anything else, most likely. I also got thrown out of robed choir in high school, for having a bad voice -teacher’s words- in front of the entire class, but hey, I got to read romance novels while everybody else sang, so who really won that breakup?) Then again, Sting is probably never going to write a historical romance novel. (If he did, though, I’d probably read it.) Which is all okay, because there’s room for both in this crazy world we live in, and lots of people like both. It’s not an either/or kind of thing going on here. I appreciate that.

The more we exercise any muscle, the stronger it gets. When I booted TSM last night, it wasn’t real Sims. I hadn’t played in forever. There were going to be things I forgot, skills that got rusty, and I didn’t remember who all my characters were. I wanted to game, though, needed to game, and this was the game I could play, and so it was going to happen. Little splashing around in the shallows, but then I got into it and, by the time I shut down because I had to adult, quest completed, fun had, next quest already picked out. It felt a lot like writing, which is why I like the Sims franchise. It uses a lot of the same muscles; character creation, the development of relationship, goals, motivations and conflicts, and, in the end, telling a story. Telling a story is what I love most. Plop it in an old-timey setting, and I am home, baby.

Reaching the points I’m at for the current mss is scary, because I’ve leveled up. I beat the monster of the first levels, laid my foundations, and now I need to build and fortify. Decorate, because making things look right is part of the fun. Combat the bigger, stronger monsters that come with each new level, because my big goal is defeating the boss at the end. Or, in the case of writing a book, The End. All those voices that say “you can’t do it,” or, worse, “you can’t do it anymore,” those need to be drowned out by the clicking of keys, the scratch of pen against paper, a playlist with a respectable amount of Sting on it, and one foot in front of the other until the final draft is done.

Hey Hey It’s A Monday

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New office chair (thank you, Ursula) is in place, it is super comfortable, and my back has already sent out hand-written thank you notes to my brain, which my brain greatly appreciates. I am having a weird hair day. Not a bad one, merely a weird one, which is why there are messy buns and beak clips. I am wearing both an infinity scarf and sandals, a sure sign that it is September in New York. I have learned, only about five minutes ago, and a day after I used a wrench to open a particularly sticky bottle of seltzer, that what I thought was a mini-mousepad is actually a bottle opener grippy thing.

I  have had said grippy thing since the NECRWA conference this past spring, and it took me that long to figure it out. If I hadn’t noticed that the surface of the supposed min-mousepad, which should have been smooth (which is kind of the whole point) was textured and kind of rubbery-pebbly, but in a grid-ish sort of fashion rather than actual pebbles, I probably still wouldn’t know, and would keep toting the darned thing around, rather than tossing it in the kitchen drawer where I now know it belongs. This also means that mini-mousepad goes on my list of desired (preferably pink) computer accessories.

This was not my only d’oh-worthy discovery of the afternoon. The notebook in which I made notes that I had planned to transcribe today? Left it at home. Okay. Slightly different focus to today’s session, then. When packing my tote, my brain was too busy with the “is it time to put away the summer tote for the season” debate to notice that I had not actually brought the notebook that was the whole point of going out, but I can do what’s on the index cards for now and fill in the rest when notebook and I are in the same place. I will admit to a small voice in the back of my head, whispering that it’s a sign I should instead use the time to watch Friday Night Lights, but I am not listening to that voice during writing time. Writing time is writing time, and much as I love spending time with Coach Taylor and the gang (mostly Tim; came for Jason Street, aka Future Mr. Amber Holt, stayed for Tim Riggins, still don’t care about football, but love the passion for the game) they are not going to get this book written. That’s my job. I show up, Hero and Heroine show up, too, and we all hit the field…er, page, which is when the magic happens.

I like knowing where I’m going, how I’m going to get there, and who’s going with me. I’ve tried pantsing, but as a person who has actually sustained physical injury from putting on pants, that is not a tactic that works well for me. There is a component of flying into the mist when following the original idea -the best characters and/or stories are the ones that find me- but when I know where the journey of a particular book is going, I want to know how we’re going to get there, what the stops are along the way, and leave enough room for some fun surprises.

Learning to ask for what I need is a new thing for me, and that includes asking myself…and listening. That’s scary. What do I need right now? Do I need to touch paper? Step away from the keyboard, touch some paper. Maybe my version of black on white that I need right now is actually purple on pattern. Am I not physically comfortable right now? If I am, how so? Am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired? Do I not have what I need to know what happens in this scene? If so, I can go get it. Maybe that means popping online, to check a bit of information. Maybe it means I need to talk about it to a write friend, online or face to face. Maybe the missing bit is at the bottom of a cup of tea or at the end of a movie or TV episode that has the right feel, or that actor who does that thing in that scene. Maybe it’s in the middle of the bridge of that song I can’t get out of my head, or somewhere in the book my brain keeps going back to when I don’t yank its leash.

I’m at the end of my blog time for today, so I’m going to take some inspiration from Skye’s weekly signoff and say that’s about it for this entry. Sometimes, what I need is a good pointless babble, which, in reflection, makes it not that pointless after all. There is an inherent order into unexpected side trips, as long as they get me back on the main road, and I am going to call that good enough.

 

Typing With Wet Claws: Finally Fall Edition

annabowling 4 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. I am feeling much better this week, and so is Anty. For me, it is because the gross, disgusting stuff Anty smeared on my nose (so that I would lick it off) worked. Stuff came out of both ends of me, and that was not fun, but I did not have to go to the pokey place after all, because I got rid of the big hairball that was in my tummy. The humans gave me my special gushy food after my tummy settled, because I am a good girl. That part, I liked.

The part Anty likes is that it is now officially fall. That means her super powers have come back. It also means that she has book brain more often, but that is an occupational hazard. She does not mind that so much, because it is easier to write. I can tell that is true, because, this week, we have two posts I need to tell you about before we can do anything else. First, there is Anty’s weekly discussion post at Buried Under Romance. She forgot to share the link again, but that does not stop readers from finding it, and she has me to share it with all of you. This week, she talks about the different formats in which humans can read their stories. Which one do you like best? Her post is here:

http://buriedunderromance.com/2016/09/saturday-discussion-whats-your-favorite-format.html and it looks like this:

bur170916

 

Then, because fall means new TV shows it also means that Anty will be recapping some of them that have special kissy moments, for Heroes and Heartbreakers. Anty had a little bit of book brain when she recapped the premiere of This Is Us, but I think she did okay, all things considered. No cats in this show, as far as I can tell, but Anty lilked it anyway. That post is here:

http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com/blogs/2016/09/happy-birthday-this-is-us-season-1-episode-1-heart-to-heart and it looks like this:

 

thisisuss1e1hth

 

Now that it is officially fall, Anty is very happy to have a whole new season full of shows to recap, and to be working on two books that she loves, the beach ball, with Anty Melva, and Her Last Fist Kiss, on her own, at the same time. She and Anty Melva are proposing a workshop for the NECRWA conference, on writing through the tough parts of life, so she is looking forward to finding out about that. If they do not present at the conference, then that is still okay, and they can look at presenting to local RWA chapters.

Anty is also very happy that there will be a new addition to the office this weekend. Thanks to a very kind CRRWA chapter sister, Anty can retire the camp chair back to the balcony and put a new-to-her office chair in there, instead. Back support is apparently important to humans. Mama is also making Anty step up her game on the desktop front, and by helping, I mean checking the numbers and making sure the computer Anty buys is strong enough to do everything Anty wants it to do. Writing is the main focus, of course, but we will all be a lot happier when Anty can play Sims again. Trust me, a Sim-less Anty is not something anybody wants to see.

Fall also means that Anty can bake more often. Usually, this means cookies, which I do not eat, because I am a kitty, but it also can mean macaroni and cheese, which I also do not eat (same reason.) Her macaroni and cheese looks like this:

macaroniandcheese0916

Hungry yet?

Anty found the original recipe in a magazine for humans who like making food, but she made some changes, and Uncle says she made enough changes that it counts as her own recipe now. She keeps that recipe in her head. That would make one of her antys proud, because that particular anty  was an amazing cook, but never wrote down a single recipe, or used any measurements; she just knew. Uncle says that might be because that particular  anty used to be a professional chef, and she spent enough time with her tools and ingredients, that she didn’t have to measure or write anything down, because she knew what she was doing, that well. I think that is pretty impressive, and I also think that it carries over into writing.

I do not mean that writers require macaroni and cheese before they can write (but then again, I do not think it could hurt, either.) I mean that, when one does something long enough, and does it a whole lot of times, it isn’t always necessary to stop and check to make sure every single step is exactly the way it ought to be. Like Anty’s anty knew how heavy a teaspoon of salt felt in her hand, for example, and Anty knows that she needs one sleeve of graham crackers to pulverize for her macaroni and cheese topping, she also knows what she needs to make a romance novel.

It may have taken  a while to get to that point, but it is a big relief for Anty to know she doesn’t have to stop and check that there are this many words and how characters need to be this or that. When she makes macaroni and cheese, she gets out the things she will need, puts them in the right place, turns on the right kind of music, and then…she knows. Getting to this phase of writing again feels like that. Here are the characters, and what happens to them, and the outline is how it happens, and here’s the notebook and here’s the pen and here’s the keyboard, and she knows. It is kind of scary to be at that point, but, if Anty concentrates on what she has to do right now, and doesn’t try to fix everything all at once, every step leads to the final product.

Right now, I would like her steps to lead to my food bowl, so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

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

 

Book Brain

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“Your hero and heroine should be different people at the beginning and the ending of a book. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

— Rebecca Zanetti

 

Right now, half of me would like to retire to my comfy chair and split my time between binge watching Friday Night Lights and making a dent in my huge TBR mountain. The other half wants to dive back into Her Last First Kiss and rip Hero and Heroine’s lives to shreds before they get their happily ever after at last. The power balance fluctuates, but here’s a short list of things I have done because my head was in the book, rather than non-book tasks at hand:

  • smacked head into faucet because I forgot I was washing my hair when an idea hit
  • eviscerated rather than pierced three bratwurst while cooking
  • had three water bottles going at one time because I forgot where I put them
  • put one (full) water bottle in the cat food section of the pantry and left it there
  • missed my “exit” on the walk home from breakfast with N
  • sent the same EARC to my Kindle ten times, possibly more, but that’s where I stopped counting
  • asked for a login name reminder for a site I visit frequently, because I couldn’t remember what I’d used. It was my name.

Yeah, this is boring me now, and I don’t have time to start a whole new blog entry from scratch, so we’re going forward from here. Point is, I have book brain, and I like it. This book is real. It’s happening. That’s a good thing.

Yesterday, at my weekly breakfast with N, I’d brought Big Daddy Precious and a mess of index cards and sticky notes, to take her through this draft’s bones. I know I’m on the right track because the chapters sorted themselves out, and I have numbers and color codes, and getting to the page is something I look forward to, rather than dread. I don’t have to ask myself if I can do this book thing, because I am doing it, and if I show up, Hero and Heroine show up, too. Pretty sweet deal. Here’s what it looked like by the time I packed up to go home, about halfway through the whole story.

hlfknotebook200916

 

See all those sticky notes? There’s a color coding system, but that’s another story. I read the pages through to N, and she stopped me at a certain point. Heroine can’t do Thing A. Huh, wuh? My story, N. I’m the one who gets to say about what goes on in it, but no, N was right. See, Heroine would normally do Thing A, like she did all the other times, because she honestly believed there was no other option, but she’s different by this part of the story, so different that she can’t do Thing A anymore, because Thing A would be wrong now. She’s had a pretty big paradigm shift, so yes, N was right. Now that Heroine has gone through an irreversible change, she’s going to take a different tactic. She’s not going to do Thing A. She’s going to, for the first time in her life, do Thing B, which scares the crap out of her, but it’s her chance to do something right. Hence the flurry of sticky notes and pencil scribblings in the margin, a zig where there was once a zag, and darned if I don’t now love the scene I used to like. For a writer, there is no jolt of energy quite like that.

As fine a gentleman as Mr. N is,  I have to admit that my reaction to his joining us, to spirit N away at the end of our time together, was, “already?” Noooo, I want to keep going. Forbidding a friend to go adventuring with her own real life romance hero is something this romance writer cannot do, so they departed. I applied pencil to paper a while longer, and headed back home, foggy about my route, because I had Hero and Heroine on the brain. My body traversed, more or less, the distance between Panera and home, with detour through the park’s garden. Where I really wanted to be was back in the book, figuring out how much Heroine doing Thing B  instead of Thing A would butterfly effect the rest of the book, so there was some degree of wandering involved.

When I got home, I crashed into an impromptu nap, and when I woke, I was hungry for both food and story. I needed to take in story, in book form, in TV form, in music or wherever else I could find it. Writing eats that kind of stuff, and I came out of that nap in starving hyena mode. It’s a good feeling, after years of dragging myself along by my fingernails. Maybe there is some sort of formula, if I look through the stacks of notebooks I’ve filled about the whole process of getting back up on the horse. I’m still not sure when one can declare oneself officially back on, if there is such a thing? Completion of an initial draft? Final draft? Submission? Sale and/or self-pub? Certain types or numbers of reviews? Distribution through certain outlets? Something else? I’m not going to stress about that, but stay in the moment, fill those pages with sticky notes and pencil scribbles and go scene by scene. Right now is right now, and that’s where my time and attention has to go. If that means a few water bottles in the pantry, duplicate ebooks and opening multiple cans of cat food at one time, I am okay with that.

Theory and Practice

annabowling 3 Comments

The cookie, for those who are wondering, is coconut chocolate chip. I wasn’t going to get a cookie today, but I had a deal with myself that, if there was anything with coconut in it, I could make an exception. I wasn’t going to wear my long beige skirt yet again, but it’s comfortable, I strongly dislike wearing pants, and always have. I think it’s in my blood. Anyway, the point I’m getting to, besides the fact that I did have a topic in mind for today’s post, over the weekend, but cannot, for the life of me, remember it now, is that things change. That’s a given.

Since I like to plan and organize, earlier in the week, I made lists of things I need to get my office at its peak functionality. Big things like replacing the ancient desktop that is out for blood (specifically mine) and refuses to recognize the internet, medium things like deciding whether it’s better to find a way to get the super awesome office chair out of the storage unit 200 miles away but will not fit in the back seat of Housemate’s car, down here, or drop a few bucks at a local retailer to get an okay chair, because the makeshift camp-chair-with-smushed-pillow no longer works, to smaller things like a wireless mouse. I have never had a wireless mouse. Besides my intrinsic distrust of technology (apart from technology that will let me play The Sims) I’ve always had a thing about wireless whatever.

Never saw the point. The electronics dude at the retailer I visited when my mini mouse died advised me away from a wireless mouse for a couple of reasons, battery life included. Valid points, and I appreciate his expertise, but I don’t like hauling around a big, corded mouse when I’m on the go. Big, corded mouse is also gray, and having a big glop of gray wires is not my favorite part of taking laptop pictures. Hence, need for pink mini mouse, no tail (Does that make it a hamster?)

My original plan for today was to get all the handwritten notes I made for Her Last First Kiss from last week, transcribed, so I could send them to N, in anticipation of our breakfast tomorrow. That’s not what happened, or it hasn’t happened yet. I had some time sensitive tasks to clear off my desk. I critiqued the chapter a writer friend had sent me, looked over a pitch for a workshop Melva and I would like to try out at a regional conference this year, and wrangled a couple of other tasks. Researched for an upcoming H&H post, and took care of some domestic issues before they became tornadoes. Much easier to think and write when the environment is not in chaos. While doing all of the above, I also  reminded myself that the transcription didn’t have to happen today.

It will happen. That’s how books get written, at least my books, and, as it so happens, those are the only ones I can control, so works out well that way. I’ve already told N I’m going to bring the notebook and scene cards with me, so we can talk about them. Some things are, very likely, going to change. We’re going to spread the cards out on top of the table between us, move some around, combine a few, maybe throw out a card or two. What’s going to go in that document after we talk isn’t going to be exactly, word for word, what I have there now. Pretty close, I’m sure, but I will have picked up threads I didn’t know I’d dropped, ensured that everything planted in the beginning is harvested in the end, and then…then I go forward. This phase of creating the book will be over, and it will be time to print things out, go scene by scene, and Get This Done.

That’s both scary and exciting. There have been more manuscripts I can count that didn’t make it this far. I miss some of them. Others weren’t meant to be, but all were started with the best of intentions. This one…this is one of the books that found me, instead of the other way around , and  it talks back. I wanted Hero to be blond and a musician. He told me, pretty soon into our venture, that he was ginger and an artist. Pen and ink, thank you, though he’s done other things to get by, but that’s his natural bent. Heroine, too, wouldn’t get in line, and, now, I’m glad that she didn’t, because I like her the way she is, rather than the way I’d originally wanted her to be.

Not that different from looking at the schedule made at the start of the day, before the day actually started day-ing, but there’s something to be said for rolling with the punches and taking things as they come. It all gets done, not always in the order I’d intended, but what I’ve got is what feels right, and I am okay with that.

 

Typing With Wet Claws: Hairballs and Index Cards Edition

annabowling 2 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. I am not feeling that great this week, which is why Anty started off this morning by chasing me around the dark apartment with a spoonful of hairball remedy. I tried to hide in Uncle’s office, but she caught me and tilted the spoon near my nose, which is where she is supposed to put the icky gross disgusting stuff. The other humans call it hairball remedy, and the packaging says cats love it. Well, I do not. I have been a pukey girl, and, because I am shedding like a boss, the humans are pretty sure it is because I have a hairball that needs some help getting out of me. At this point, I really do not care which end, but we all hope we can take care of this ourselves and not need to go to the pokey place (aka the vet.)

I am still happy to play with my people and follow them around, and I am drinking my water, which is good, so I will go ahead with this blog entry. Anty says doing normal things helps. This week, Anty’s post at Buried Under Romance is about the other kind of book hangover, and by that, she means the kind that is not fun. That post is here:

http://buriedunderromance.com/2016/09/saturday-discussion-the-other-book-hangover.html

and it looks like this:

bur

 

Anty has also been hard at work this week, on Her Last First Kiss.  Right now, she is making sure she does not have any holes in the story, and, to do that, she needs to touch paper. That means that working on the computer alone is not going to allow her to connect with the mechanics of this phase of the writing. This week, she took a pack of index cards and opened her document. Then she wrote the title of every scene (some of them, she can now see, are actually chapters) on one side of the index card, and then, on some of  them, she put a few notes about what happens on that scene.

Next, she took out her Big Daddy Precious notebook that is only for this story, and started writing down (she is not done yet, because she has been taking care of me) the title of each card, and then what she can remember about the scene, only from memory. Sometimes, that does not match what is in the file, but that is okay. This is why they call them drafts. When Anty does this, she can see where she is repeating herself, and where she might need additional material. She makes notes on the backs of the cards (or maybe it is the front; kitties are not known for their understanding of office supplies) and uses highlighters in the notebook to let her know what is a Hero scene and what is a Heroine scene. That makes her desk look like this:

desktop150916

please note use of filter

 

Anty gets a little nervous at the prospect of putting things that are not perfect down in a special notebook, but that is what the notebook is there for, in the first place. It is okay to learn, and to make mistakes while doing so. Anty’s plan is to go through the whole book this way and then show the result to Miss N, and maybe Critique Partner Vicki, to get some feedback. Then it will be time to flesh out what needs fleshing out, and putting everything together. It will probably also be time for Uncle to make Anty some more coconut pancakes, because Anty loves coconut pancakes. I have never had coconut pancakes, because I am a kitty, but I bet if I gave Anty my big beggy eyes, she might give me some. She is still figuring out what foods are best for me when I don’t feel so good, but she has not tried giving me coconut pancakes yet. They might help. Maybe. When I am sick, I like food with gravy on it. Maple syrup is a kind of gravy, isn’t it?

pancakesandnotebook

Yep, right on top of the special notebook. Anty has priorities.

 

The other thing that is going on over here is that the batteries on the smoke detectors are all dying at the same time. They are very considerate and make a chirping sound to let the humans know it is time to change the batteries. The annoying thing is that they are very, very high on the ceilings and chirp so much that it sounds like a bird sanctuary in here. It is not a bird sanctuary, though. I checked. No actual birds, except the ones outside, and I am an indoor girl. Unless I have to go to the vet, and then I will go outside in my carrier, but I will not be able to get any birds. Unless there are birds at the vet. Hm. I may have to think about this. Maybe there is an upside to everything.

That is about it for this week. There has been some talk about giving me another dose of the hairball remedy, because Anty is not sure if she actually got it into me, since it was dark this morning. The humans say the remedy will help me feel better, but they have not tasted it, so easy for them to say. I’d better find a better hiding place. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

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