personal

Typing With Wet Claws: Loud and Cordless Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. My picture is very dark this week, because Anty misplaced the USB cord that connects her camera to her computer and has to rely on pictures she has already uploaded until she can replace or locate the cord. I do not blame her much, because this week has been a big one.

On Tuesday, Landlady came to the house with Handyman, to make sure that the apartment was ready for a state inspection for loud buzzy things. I do not know why the state wants us to have loud buzzy things in our house. Anty says it is because those are smoke alarms and will help us if there is a fire. I can understand that, but did that mean humans had to ring the doorbell that much?

When a human who does not have a key wants to come inside, they press the doorbell outside, and it rings inside. It is loud. It is a metal thing that bangs against another metal thing and it makes a buzz we can feel in the floor. It scares me, and Anty and Uncle and Mama do not like it, either. On Tuesday, it rang a lot. Uncle sometimes sleeps during the day because he works hard in the evenings. I sleep whenever I want, because I am a kitty. The doorbell woke us both up, and then strange humans came inside. One of them changed all the buzzy things to new buzzy things. He had to get on a ladder to do that, and then had to make the buzzy things buzz to make sure we would know when a fire happens.

I thought that was going to be it, but that was not it. Landlady came back on Thursday, with a different human she called Inspector, to check all the buzzy things again. This meant more doorbells, but Inspector only looked at the buzzy things. He was smart enough to know from looking at them that they would work, and he was as quiet as he could be so that Uncle could rest and I would not be too scared. I still went under the bed, to make double sure.

Anty has found this week a challenging one for work. For one thing, when she wants to clean the apartment, it is best to get out of her way and let her do it. She says that her story people talk to her when she is doing that kind of thing, so it is kind of like working, but she gets impatient and would like to have all that stuff written down (I wonder if she could dictate to me, since I have my own computer now. Maybe once the keyboard gets fixed at the computer vet. I am already fixed. That happened at the regular vet, before I got adopted.) Then there were the afternoons spent waiting for the inspection related things and it did not help that she misplaced the USB cord. Losing essential things like that makes her cranky. Without the cord, she can take all the pictures she wants, but she cannot edit or upload them. She cannot share pictures of her work area, ducks, books, or me. I can see why that would make her cranky. She chased me around the living room with the tablet this morning, trying to get a picture of me with that. It did not end well. All she got were some pictures of her own face. She is not sure she wants to share those but one never knows.

Reading can go a long way toward making Anty un-cranky, so she should do more of that.. Since it is that time of month again, she shared her best read of May over at Heroes and Heartbreakers. A lot of other bloggers shared their favorites, too. Maybe Anty should try some of those books as well, because she still has some un-cranking to do. The post is here and it looks like this:

H&H Best Reads of May

H&H Best Reads of May

Yesterday, after the inspector and Landlady left, Anty wanted to work on her book, so she headed to the coffee house. Things did not go as planned there, either, as Scrivener would not work for her at all, and that is where she is writing the book, which meant that was a problem. She would have searched online for a solution, but, in keeping with the rest of the week, her laptop would not hold onto the wifi signal. She was not happy with that and wrote on something else in Word for a while, then came home and took a nap. She is making grumbly noises today, too, which makes me think another nap may be in order. For me, if not for her.

One thing that makes Anty happy today is that Twitter has two special hashtags to focus on historical romance: #WhyIReadHistoricals and #WhyIWriteHistoricals. If you already follow Anty, you may have read her entries already. If you do not follow her yet, you can do so here.

That is about it for this week. Anty wants to give Scrivener another go, so I will sign off for now and see you next week (maybe sooner if Anty is too cranky to blog on her regular days.) Until then, I remain very truly yours,

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

Until next week...

Until next week…

Typing With Wet Claws: Recalibration Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. We are all catching our breath here, because it was a very big week for the humans. Anty and Mama had to go to where we used to live, to see Mama’s mama, who was at the people vet. The people vet says Grandma is doing well and she does not have to wear the cone of shame. That is a big relief. Also a big relief is that a big challenge that came up this week got resolved. Anty says thank you to those who were concerned and asked how we were doing.

Even when Anty goes on the road to take care of nonwriting things, she still wants to get some writing done. She may need to make a couple more trips before things are settled-settled (or Mama may go on her own if Anty is needed here) so getting a travel version of her home office (which in itself is in flux; that is a fancy human word that means things are changey) is essential. She took both computers with her this time; her regular laptop and her tablet (which is really more kitty sized than human sized, and I could have used it to talk to her while she was gone) as well as some notebooks.

i1035 FW1.1

this one is for freewriting

Note the frames drawn around the unlined pages. Anty found that trick on a notebook website when she was not sure she could use unlined pages. Then she read the tip about drawing a box around them, and now she likes them very much. She sometimes draws boxes around lined pages and then makes a big colored band on the outside of the box. This time, it was only a box and no color, and she wrote down what she was feeling about what was going on in life. That helps keep her brain from getting jumbled, so the stories have a clear path. At least, that is how I think it works.

Anty had a new post at Heroes and Heartbreakers this week, recapping the newest episode of Outlander, “Wentworth Prison.” It is here and it looks like this:

not for young viewers

not for young viewers

Some people do not like things like the scenes Anty had to recap in this episode, but Anty says they do not make her scared. She finds them interesting, and likes to see what it is that makes humans get through tough times like the humans in Outlander do. My Anty Mary (Mama and Anty got to visit Anty Mary while they were on their trip) reminded Anty that Anty needs to get the first season of Game of Thrones, because Anty will find that very interesting. Anty would like to, and she would also like more hours in the day, but they would probably get filled with laundry and things like that.

Anty also likes when books have people go through interesting things, so she is always glad to find (and write) books where that happens. She was very happy to find some books like that in the storage unit when she went to look for something else. She has read the books on the left and right before, but wanted to have them on the shelf in her office, and she had been looking for the book in the middle for a long time. Finding it in the middle of a tough day made her day a lot better.

I was named for one of these books...

I was named for one of these books…

Now that Anty is back home, she is making lists and seeing what needs to be done to get back on track. There is some talk of a new desktop computer arriving in the not too distant future. We will have to see how that affects me. I suspect that it will be scary at first, but then I will get used to it, and Anty will do more of her writing at home. This will probably require me to make some sort of peace with the office carpet. I suppose we all have our challenges.

Until next week...

Until next week…

That is about it for this week, so, until then, I remain very truly yours,

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

Okay Not to be Okay

annabowling Leave a comment

Once in a while, life drops a bomb on all of us. That’s what’s happened in our family this week, and I’m not sure how much I want to write about it here, because this is a writing blog, and this isn’t a writing thing. It impacts my writing, of course, as time spent wrangling family stuff is time spent not writing, but it is also, as everything in a writer’s life, going to end up in a story someday. But writing about the thing itself? Ehhhh, don’t know yet. It’s still fresh. Still dealing with the things-that-need-to-be-done-now and making plans and considering contingencies and and and and and…

…there are a lot of ands. A lot of ifs, a lot of maybes, a lot of we could trys, a lot of I don’t knows. Life can be scary sometimes, and it looks like this may be one of those times. Even so, writing remains my happy place. Going into the story world and closing the door behind me isn’t so much an escape -the other stuff will still be there when I come out again- but more of a respite. It’s some time away that fills em so that I am better able to deal with what’s going on when I’d really rather be writing.

One good thing about writing in the midst of chaos, besides the respite, is that it crystallizes things. I want this. I want to keep writing the main focus of my life.  I will gaurd it and chase it and hunt it down with a club when I need to, because I need it. There’s a power in knowing this is why I am here, and this is the genre I love and I have stories yet to tell, so what other people call “real life” is going to have to calm down and take a seat so that I can get down to business. Sometimes, that will mean I can hunker down with laptop and go clickety clack on the keys for hours. Sometimes, that means I can scrible in my pocket notebook or on an index card or jot something down on the back of a receipt or napkin and keep on going with whatever else the day has demanded of me, but the main thing remains. I can’t turn it off. Not even if I wanted to, and I don’t want to, so I won’t.

Which brings me to the title of this post. There are going to be times, in life and in writing, when things are going great. There are going to be times, in life and in writing, when things are going the exact opposite way and crawling under a rock sounds like a good idea…but nothing gets done there. What I’ve had to tell myself is that it’s okay not to be okay at times. Let the feelings do their job, but don’ t dwell on them. Feel what it feels like to be angry, afraid, confused, exhausted, exhilerated, at wits’ end, triumphant, defeated, whatever it is. Feel it. Remember it. This, too is grist for the mill, and because we write, because we read, we know the black moment comes before the resolution. If things are at their chaotic-est, that’s probably because it’s the middle of the story.

To be continued…

Typing With Wet Claws: Office Development Edition

annabowling 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

obviously for lady writers

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

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

I think there is still Olivia hair in the keyboard…

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

Anty's bookshelf of works in progress

Anty’s bookshelf of works in progress

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

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

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

not a Disney book, I promise

and on the outside:

Not a Disney book, we promise

Not a Disney book, we promise

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

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

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

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

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

Until next week...

Until next week…

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

Office Hours, aka Day Camp of the Mind

annabowling 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.

got all my ducks in a row...

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!

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...

‘ello, ducks…

Typing With Wet Claws: The Kids Are All Right Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for a special Thursday edition of Typing With Wet Claws. I am writing to you today from a sunbeam, where I am practicing my selfie game. Camera angle is everything, Anty says. I think she may be onto something.

Anyway, this has been a busy week for Anty. I will tell you more about that tomorrow, because then there will be more links. It is season finale time, so there are more people kissing on TV than usual, which means Anty gets to talk about all the TV kisses. She is also reading a lot, and working on both her novel and collaborating on a novella. Which means I may need to pitch in more with the blogs for a while. That is okay. I could use the practice.

Today, Anty is keeping her head down and eyes on her own paper. She has a post to write for Buried Under Romance, a novel timeline to create (she will tell you about that later) and there will be important kissy things on Big Bang Theory, so she will probably have to write about that later tonight. She is also reading her way through a big stack of books from the library. Here is the current read:

i1035 FW1.1

Reading now…

Anty has been reading a lot of young adult books lately, though her focus is still historical romance. She wasn’t sure at first why she was reading these books, this much and this fast, but they come in from the library and go out again, very quickly. She is still reading historical romance, as you can see from her currently reading list on Goodreads (are you Anty’s friend there? She likes to have friends there.) so it is not instead of her favorite genre, but along with it.

It took her a few books to catch on to what she’s reading for here. Anty loves a strong authorial voice (this means the way the human writes, not when a human reads a book aloud, although she does like to listen to books on audio, so sometimes, it is both) and there are some excellent ones in YA at the moment. Some of her favorites are: John Green, Rainbow Rowell, and Gayle Forman. Alongside the voice, the other thing she found that the books she likes have in common is the intense emotion involved when young humans first fall in love (with other humans, that is, not with kitties, although some of these books do have kitties in them.) These are both things she would like to see more of in historical romance as a whole.

Anty will do this from time to time, latch onto some seemingly random source of information and study the, um, word Anty says is not nice for kitties to type. We will say “stuffing” instead. She studies the stuffing out of it and then she has a new tool to put in her toolbox and tell her stories even better than before. Some of these sources come up after big life events, and Anty can trace this to last year, around this time. She took Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell, out of the library and read it while in the waiting room of the people vet, and something clicked.

Authorial voice is difficult to explain for a human, so I, who am a kitty, am not even going to try. Basically, you will know it when you hear it. Or read it. If Elvis Presley, Luciano Pavarotti and Justin Beiber all sang the same song (not at the same time, please) it would not be neccessary to announce who was singing when. It is the same with writing. Each writer has a distinct way they tell their stories, a combination of everything they have ever heard, seen, read, done, etc. The really good ones cannot be imitated, but can inspire others to find what they recognize within that voice and let it fuel their own.

That is what Anty is looking for here. Strong voice, intense emotion and also how to use some Very Hard Things in life within an emotionally satisfactory love story. Not all of the love stories end happily in YA novels (but that is okay, because the humans are very young and have lots of time to find a mate that is right for them) but some of them do. Some even take more than one book to tell. Where She Went, for example, is the second installment of another book, If I Stay. The first book was told from the female human’s point of view, and the second from the male’s, a few years later, after A Bad Thing Happened. This author has done the same thing before, in a different pair of books, and Anty finds this extremely interesting. Romance novels usually do have both points of view, but they are all in one book and take turns in different chapters. Having all of one point of view in one book and all of the other in another is new and interesting.

She is also listening to a lot of music by a band named Fun, which also gets into some intense emotions, so do not let their name make them sound fluffy. Right now, she is looking at me and tapping her foot, so I think that is all of my computer time for today. I will be back tomorrow with my regular post. In the meantime, you can see a list of some of the YA books she has liked here. If you know of any other books like this Anty might like, let her know in the comments.

See you Friday....

See you Friday….

Until then, I remain very truly yours,

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

Flipping the Switch

annabowling Leave a comment

Some days, the writing comes easy. Other days, it’s not. Then there are the days where getting to the writing place is a bigger challenge than making the story happen. This may be one of those days. It’s been one of those weekends. Possibly weeks. Hard to tell, sometimes. Things like this are going to happen to every writer, at one time or another. If it hasn’t happened yet, wait.

Real Life Romance Hero is back home, and we’re settling into the post-hospital, get-back-on-feet phase. Funny thing about that phase, it’s rarely the same twice, and yet it’s consistent. Caregiving is a different mindset from writing historical romance, though both are fueled by love.

On the caregiving front, there are medications to dispense, things to watch for, ways to help the loved one get back in their game. Some are physical, some are emotional. A lot of them take a lot of energy out of the caregiver, even when it’s given gladly. In most cases, things are more orderly in story world, the characters (usually) exactly where the writer has left them, and if they move, most times they will leave a forwarding address. Funny thing about the times when writing has to go on the back burner; sometimes, story problems work themselves out while the writer is tending to other things. Sometimes this has something to do with those other things, and sometimes, all the story needed was some time and space to do its own thing.

By now, I’ve found there is a pattern, at least for me, to switch between the two modes. No big surprise, it involves stationery.

My park boyfriend? (considering that he swam away, probably not :P)

My park boyfriend?
(considering that he swam away, probably not)

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever received was from K.A. Mitchell:

  1. Change your seat.
  2. Open the file.

Okay, that’s two, but they go together. This morning, after not enough sleep and too much stress, the fact remained that it was still Monday, and nobody else is going to write my stories, blog entries, etc. So. This means writing must happen, even if brain wants to crawl under the covers and pretend it is eight years old. That’s where the sage advice comes into play. I filled my purple cup with ice and water, loaded my hobo bag with notebook, pen pouch and camera and headed for the park. No idea what I was going to do when I got there, but:

  1. Change your seat.
*not* the view from my recliner

*not* the view from my recliner

It’s been said that time + distance = perspective, and I do find that to be true. In this case, a walk around the lake (lack of mallard boyfriend notwithstanding) puts me in a different head space than the same four walls I see every day. I also noticed that I saw only the male ducks, which lets me know the gals may very well be tending their nests, which means bebeh duckage in the not too distant future. That alone is a mood booster, and the physical act of walking around the lake and peeping at blooming things does get the mind in a different frame.

boys, boys, boys

boys, boys, boys

Which is the right place to be for:

2. Open the file.

In this case, the notebook. I’ve learned that, for me, when I’m staring at a blinking cursor, or don’t know what file to open first, the answer lies in good old pen and paper. Big notebook is by Papaya Art, small notebook is Moleskine. There’s something special in touching the smooth paper (will probably do another post on the Papaya Art books later) and deciding which color gets to come out and play when I freewrite.

i1035 FW1.1

Part of the freewriting is making lists. What projects do I need to work on this week? Which ones are time-sensitive/have a deadline? Which do I feel most capable to take on in my present state? Which ones need some time and distance? What specific tasks do I need to complete to make progress on said projects?

Breaking it down that way is a lot more manageable than looking at the big looming wall of Things To Be Done. I’m intuitive, but like order, so sometimes, it’s asking myself which task feels like it wants to be done first. Things usually look like this:

  • make bullet point outline for scene X in Project A
  • blorch (aka babble on paper) for scene Y in Project B
  • visit sites C, D and E to research Project F
  • respond to latest email from Collaborator on Joint Project

Maybe research is what I can do at the moment, or maybe I want to dive into the wilds of a blorch, where it’s gloves off and anything goes, where getting it all down as fast and true and messy as possible is what’s needed. Putting things down in pen and ink can be like putting a cage around the Tasmanian Devil whirling at will through my brain space. Contained, he’ll tire himself out, settle down, and we can have some fun together. Thing by thing, what do I need to make each thing happen?

Not that different, after all, from caregiving. Maybe some of this is taking care of those voices who live in my head. Maybe not, but what I do know is that it’s a pretty reliable way to flip the switch that opens the door to story world, and I’m glad it’s there.

Writer friends, how do you flip your switches?

Typing With Wet Claws: Back to the People Vet Edition (With Notebook)

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Hello, all. Skye here, for a later than usual Feline Friday. Uncle had to go back to the people vet again today. Anty says he went into the carrier on his own, so I think the carrier people may have taken my suggestion about throwing in some food to entice him. Anty says the people vets are taking very good care of Uncle, and he will come home when he is better.

Anty spent all day at the people vet with Uncle, keeping him company and making sure that the people vets had all the right information so they could figure out why Uncle did not feel well. She says they figured it out after they poked him with some needles and put him in a machine that takes pictures of his insides. I do not think I want to see that kind of camera. It sounds scary.

While Anty waited with Uncle, she wrote some in her new notebook, which she moved into earlier this week. Anty likes to make her all purpose notebooks look special. That makes her want to use them more. The notebook she moved into was very plain when she got it. It is a Picadilly, the same as the one she filled a few days ago, only that one was black, and this one is red.

Plain notebook, pre-hacking

Plain notebook, pre-hacking

endpapers make an impact

endpapers make an impact

Anty covered the inside cover of the notebook (it was very plain) with scrapbook paper, cut down to fit and rounded the corners. She likes to keep a consistent color theme, Note the small accent of aqua in the lower corner there.

inside back cover, with pocket

inside back cover, with pocket

Back inside cover gets the same treatment. There is a pocket beneath the paper with the heart on it. Normally, Anty will put a decorative postcard on the pocket, but with this design, she doesn’t need to do that, as she likes the paper the way it is. If you are wondering what is inside the pocket, it is business cards, stamps and a notecard and envelope. She will probably add other things as time goes on, but that is enough for now.

contact information and ink test pages

contact information and ink test pages

Although there is nothing written on these pages in this picture, these pages have decorative paper on parts of them so that she has a dedicated space for important phone numbers and email addreses at the front of the book. That is one side of this spread. The other side is where she can test different kinds of ink she might like to use in this book. Normally, she uses that as the last page in the book, but this time, she decided to try something different. So far, it is working out well.

Anty did a lot of freewriting while waiting with Uncle. It is not fiction, but it still counts. Sometimes, she will put notes for stories she is working on in this sort of book, if she does not have the dedicated book for said story with her, and transcribe it later, either into the proper book or a computer file. I do not think she will be transcribing what she wrote today. but she does have the day’s to do list that can carry over to another day. There are a lot of writing things on that list.

For now, she is going to get some rest and check in on Uncle in the morning. I had better keep her company while she gets that rest.

Until next week...

Until next week…

Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

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

Conference Recap, Part the First: Friday

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In more ways than one, but we’ll get to that. NECRWA’s annual Let Your Imagination Take Flight conference was this past weekend, and while I’d planned to blog about my experience immediately, life reminded me there is more going on than writing – but it does remind me how much I want it, so that’s all good.

Robin Sparkles, in action

Robin Sparkles, in action

Every conference starts with a road trip. Since my move to NY, this now means two hours with Housemate, en route to MA, where I make the switch to my longtime conference roomie, the lovely Melva Michaelian, who writes on the cozy side of romantic suspense. Two more hours on the road, nattering about works in progress and life in general, and then we get to walk the red carpet (only the literal one, more’s the pity. There was a carpet. It was red. No press, though. It was only a color. :hangs head: We strutted anyway, luggage in tow.)  Technically no traffic jams, and we did not get lost, so this was a successful journey.

Since we had forgotten (whoops) that the workshop with Lauren Dane was actually the master class and had needed to be registered for in advance, Melva and I ensconced ourselves in the bar, where we ran into Laurie Gifford Adams, who writes YA, and is a former chapter sister to both of us. Laurie brought along her critique partner and our new friend, Dorothy Callahan, who writes time travel and paranormal. Melva, Laurie and Dorothy headed off soon after for the first workshop of the afternoon, but I had other plans.

Offices happen anywhere

Offices happen anywhere

One of the reasons I was excited about bringing the new tablet to the conference was exactly this; writing. A scene pounced me, and since writing is kind of the whole point of being a writer, I sat out the workshop and settled into this lovely hot spot to dip into story world for the next hour. I like the office program that came with the tablet, except for one tiny omission. No quotation marks. None. I only found this out when I opened the document. Curious, that. A hotel full of writers is probably the only place where one will hear, “oh, are you writing? Sorry, catch you later,” in a genuinely happy voice. I think I could get used to that.

Bringing Robin Sparkles (yes, I name my electronics, so will be using her name and the word “tablet” interchangeably) to the conference was like bringing a new baby. Lots of coos over how tiny and pink she is, what she can do, how we found each other, etc. Some good advice from more experienced tablet users on life with tablet, and a good deal of trial and error, though I think we did all right for our first time out. The onscreen keyboard is a lot easier to get used to than I thought it would be, but my fingers are still gigantic, and there is probably a stylus in my future. If you hear any salty language from this corner of the world, that’s me trying to get Spotify to load.

But enough about me. There was, indeed, swag. Pens, bookmarks and postcards abounded, as well as some other creative ideas. I love the small book of sticky notes, and the stress cube is sure to get some use. Letter opener is always useful (for contracts, checks, fan mail, etc, right?) I will never say no to lip gloss, purse-size pack of Band-Aids is essential, but the star of the swag for this year? Flash drive. I’d needed one anyway, and bloop, there it is. Mini size, so it fits in my coin pouch. Perfect. Honorable mention to the pen shaped like a paintbrush, front and center below:

The requisite photo of swag

The requisite photo of swag

Just the books:

TBR

TBR

Megan Frampton gave  a wonderful workshop on the changing rules of the romance covenant. I really wish there were recordings of the workshops available, because there was so much information and discussion that I’d love to be able to go over it again. Does anybody else remember when athlete or rock star heroes were verboten? Now they’re hot. Age gaps, in either direction, characters with histories (or without) and persons of color in various subgenres, and more. An hour really wasn’t enough to cover the topic, but “you can’t do that in romance” can usually be rephrased as “depends how you do it.” If stepsibliing romance can be a thing, I think I’m not that far out there with my historicals (which do not contain romances between stepsiblings, fwiw.) Word is that Victorian settings have now overtaken Regency as the most popular era for historicals. I’d be interested to see the figures on that. Non-19th century historicals are still a harder sell (Challenge accepted!) though there was some discussion of medievals being on the rise. :pets Ravenwood:

Keynote speaker at dinner was the fabulous Sabrina Jeffries. I’m always excited when there’s a historical author as one of the speakers, and was doubly so this year. Her tips on writing through the hard times are a huge part of what kept my head above water when caregiving, grieving and settling relatives’ affairs (not the romantic kind, trust me) threatened to engulf everything else. The woman does know a thing or two about this business, and she has a great attitude. Her talk on creativity and how marvelous it is that we can make up stories and people and worlds all from our own imaginations was a lovely boost of encouragement. I had to give back, and let her know, when I bumped into her at breakfast the next morning, that I actually loved her historical set in Siam, lo those many years back. She said she’s looking to reissue it in ebook form, and I told her I hope she does. I’d love to read it again.

Friday evening wrapped with the second annual fireside gabfest in the lobby. Last year, it was me and Jodi Coburn (that’s us from last year, below,) whom I met over a crowded dinner table when we found out we had the same all time favorite historical romance novel. If that’s not an instant bond, I don’t know what is. This year, we were joined by Melva, Laurie and Dorothy.

photo

There was much chatter about what we were all writing and reading. I drooled over Jodi’s story binder (so stealing her spreadsheet idea) and at one point, we all whipped out our mobile devices to share photos of our furbabies. All too soon, it was time to head to our respective beds, because there was still Saturday ahead of us. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day.

Typing With Wet Claws: Anty’s Conference Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Anty is even now headed towards the NECRWA Let Your Imagination Take Flight conference, and she did not take her laptop, so I can still post for her while she is gone. She did take her tablet, even though it is much more suited for kitty sized paws, but I think she may have noticed that thing that happened with the keyboard port. All I will say is that these things can be tricky to operate when the operator has paws instead of hands.  Also no thumbs. It is probably a good thing that I am cute.

me and my new computer

me and my new computer

Anty is excited to go to the conference, as she gets to see Anty Melva and a lot of her other writer firends. Being in a whole hotel full of other romance writers is one of Anty’s favorite things, so going to this conference every year makes her very happy. I am not as happy to see her doing going things like packing her suitcase. Some kitties like to go into their humans’ suitcases and want to go with them, but I prefer to stay home. I would prefer if Anty stayed home, but she will be back after only one night away, so that is not too bad. It gives me some Skye and Uncle time, which makes me very happy. I will sit on Uncle’s feet so that he is not lonely. Or cold. My humans said there was snow yesterday, even though it is almost May. I may be a very furry indoor kitty, but that is too much even for me.

But I digress. There are a lot of things Anty likes about conferences. Being around other humans who love the same genre she does and are working toward the same career goals is exciting and encouraging. Making new friends is fun, and also getting current with old friens she hasn’t seen in a while. There are lots of books everywhere; a free one at her plate at every meal, even. I hope she does not try to put books in my dish when she gets back. I prefer cat food. She likes going to workshops and discussions, and then there are all the books, pens, and other toys that she brings home when the conference is over. My favorites are Post-its, because then she will turn them into toys for me.

Anty will share pictures and talk about the conference when she gets back. For now, she would like to remind everybody that she had a new post at Heroes and Heartbreakers this week. She got to read Anna Campbell’s new book before it went on sale, and she liked it a lot. The post is here and it looks like this:

1234

Anty usually has a lot to say when she comes back from a conference, so she will not be at a lack for blog topics when she gets back. If you are at the conference, Anty hopes that you will say hello. If you do not, she will probably find you, especially in the morning, when she has had a lot of caffiene. Breakfasts are her favorite meal of the whole conference, because they are what she calls Extroverted Morning Person Christmas. Room full of people, endless cups of tea and free books at every plate. Does it get any better than that? Anty says that depends on who her seatmates are. I am pretty sure none of them are cats.

Until next week...

Until next week…