possibly pointless blabbering

The Mondayest Monday That Ever There Mondayed (Okay, not really)

annabowling Leave a comment

Welp, it’s Monday. An extremely Monday-ish Monday, as a matter of fact. Allow me to explain. When I started off this day, I had a plan. I had a schedule. I like both of these things. By nine AM, both of them were moot. It is a full house here at Stately Bowling Manor. Both other adults are home for the day, with no plans, theoretically able to fend for themselves. THere may or may not be a pharmacy run in the afternoon, and, technically, this could be a good time to drag the bottles to recycling, which may not, at the first glance, have all that much to do with writing, ut I am determined to find a way to make that happen. A lot of us writers can’t turn that stuff off, so we have learned to live with it and steer into the skid, so to speak.

This is where being a planner person can come in handy, because the moment a domestic tornado chain blows through the combination living room/dining room/my office/Housemate’s bedroom (let us call it the Great Hall, shall we? That feels very much in keeping with all things historical romance-y, so it’s going to stay.) the instinctive response is not “aaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!” but “let me move a few things around.” Writing has to take precedence, so blog entry happens first, then I need to knock off a rough scene, because I know me, and I know that, if I don’t, I am going to be kicking myself through whatever else it is that the day might bring. This is the sort of day when the writer shoves leftovers in the general direction of all present family members, and plops themselves in front of the computer, to make the most of the time one does have.

Cryptic, I know, but my goal here is to blorch out the magic seven hundred words, move on to a scene for Drama King, and then the world of practical concerns can have some of my attention. Some of it. Only two days ago, I sat in a darkened library conference room, listening to a Damon Suede, workshop on backstory (recorded, not in person, alas. If you ever get a chance to see Damon Suede teach on anything writing related, take it. That is all.) that left me with pages full of notes, and the confidence that yes, I really am ready to start gathering questions and assorted stuff for exploring and expounding on Cornelis and Lydia’s story, whom readers can meet in “The Fox and the Lily,” in the upcoming anthology from Z Publishing. I’m still liking Plunder for the title of the full length novel, and knowing exactly what goes down with Cornelis and Lydia will lay the foundation for their daughter’s (and, ultimately grandchild’s) story.  

That’s not for today, though. Today, though my plans have been changed, there is still stuff I can do (Melva and I touch on exactly this kind of thing in our Save the Author, Save the Book workshop) so I don’t feel entirely shoved out of the way, writing-wise. Lists definitely help. I want all my tasks out where I can see them, and the week as well, so I can move things around when I need to do that. Domestic tornadoes do not mean that the things cannot get done, only that they will not get done at the time or in the way I had originally thought. This is also one of the reasons I like to have more than one project going at the same time, at different stages.

Polishing a scene into traditionally readable form may not be possible on a day like today, but can I hole up on the couch (or lock myself in the bathroom, because that, too, is a thing) and rough a scene out in longhand? I most certainly can. Sometimes, the best stuff gets born that way. Not always. It’s not a guarantee, but definitely more of a plus than a minus. When the active brain is required elsewhere, I can “look up X online” and convey information to the person who requested it, which will leave me feeling marginally accomplished enough to move on to the next task. The fact that my imaginary friends do tend to tag along on mundane errands also works in my favor. Sometimes they are helpful and sometimes they are not, but I am glad to have them, in either event.

Time to wrap this blabbery post and move on along. The sky outside is beautifully cloudy and gray, but I’m still burning daylight. TLDR takeaway from this post: if my goal is having written, then writing is the only thing that will get me there. By blabbing here, I don’t have to look at the note in my planner that oh no, I didn’t blog again on Monday, I suck, what am I even doing here, etc. Nope. Blog does not have to be perfect. Blog has to be written, and that it is, so I will count that as a success. At least that’s what I am telling myself.

It’s Monday, And I Don’t Know Where My Hero’s Bathroom Is

annabowling Leave a comment

Welp, it’s a cloudy Monday, and I am well past the time I had set aside for blogging, so let’s jump in and blabber our way to the magic seven hundred and then call it good enough, because I have a scene from Melva to read for Drama King, which may require me to draw a floor plan of one of the locations in our small shared world. I do have a couple of pictures on Pinterest, that may be of help here, and I am strongly considering building said locale in Sims 4, but Sims 4 does not have indoor ladders (or outdoor, except for the pool variety) and it really needs a ladder, because the ladder will be important, so there’s that. In short, I am procrastinatin.

I cannot, however, procrastinate everything, especially when Sebastian dropped the (hair)ball on the weekend post (also, there were domestic tornadoes; we are in the cleanup phase now) and the first few attempts at this blog entry were veering too far into the realm of planning. That is not entirely unexpected, as I spent a good chunk of the weekend, when I was not wrangling aforementioned domestic tornadoes, carrying around Li’l Pink, the traveler’s notebook I acquired over a year ago, with inserts I acquired up to six years ago, but not writing in her.

Very long story, made very short, the pretty pastel inserts I had thought were pocket size, were actually passport size the whole darned time, which is why they never lined up with the pocket sized hardcover notebooks, which, in turn, never sat right, because they had to be on the part of the elastic where the knot is, therefore not able to sit flat. Ahem. I found this out when I decided, what the heck, I’d toss in the passport sized junk journal insertI had ordered by mistake, and what ho, it’s the same size as the others. The cover clashed with the pastel inserts, but, as it turns out, tracing paper will double for vellum, in a pinch, and literally nobody on the entire planet, who is not you, is losing any sleep over this, Anna.

Okay, fine, that is not wrong, but nattering about the inserts it took me six years to figure out what size they were did get me to about the halfway mark for a full blog entry. Once the blog entry is done, I get to turn my attention to Drama King stuff. Tomorrow should be for Her Last First Kiss. Also for hauling an old air mattress to the dumpster, but nobody wants to read a blog about that. I certainly wouldn’t want to write it. I’ll stick to writing romance novels, thanks.

Sometimes, though, writing romance novels involves things one doesn’t think it would. Like the location of bathrooms, which may, in fact, drive me to Sims 4 (for research, I tell you, purely for research) When I was but a nubile ingenue (aka high school) my drama teacher told a group of aspiring thespians that we always had to know what was on the fourth wall. That is not the audience out there, it is the wall with the TV and the china cabinet and the squeaky door to the kitchen, that always swings the wrong way. It’s the front porch, or the balcony, or, well, you get the picture. Point is, it’s fixed, it doesn’t change (in realistic works) and it affects what the actors do in relation to their environment. If it’s a plate glass window, the play is set in the middle of a Minnesota winter, and a baseball sails through that window in the middle of act two, that’s an act and a half of the actors needing to convey to the audience that they are now cold, possibly dangerously so, instead of comfortable.

When we’re talking novel writing, replace “actor” with “writer,” though the character who lives in this locale is an actor, so maybe don’t. Follow your heart. No, not right now. Get back here. I’m almost done. Having all scene partners agree on what is on that fourth wall is usually a pretty good idea, because doing otherwise can lead to chaos (or some awesome improv; I’ve seen it go both ways.) This also comes into play in writing partnerships. Since Melva and I are often eerily on the same page, pun intended, I do not foresee any huge differences, and questions of “where’s thing X?” usually get met with “well, I thought it was over in place Y,” which gets met with, “oh good, that’s where I had it.” I expect that will still be the case.

And yet (there is always an “and yet”) this should not be a big deal. Our hero’s apartment is a studio, with a loft, so there is only a limited amount of places a bathroom can be, and, thanks to my experiences with my dad’s house, I know enough about where pipes go to figure out that such things narrow the options even more, so there is not a logical reason to be putting something this easy off, Anna.

Yeah, but we’re over the halfway mark, and the hero and heroine are getting ready for :drops voice to whisper: the scene.

The scene?

You know. The hero/heroine scene.

This is a romance novel. Most of the scenes are hero/heroine scenes.

Yeah, but….

If you figure out where the bathroom is, you don’t have to carry the air mattress to the dumpster.

Ever?

Today.

Eh, good enough. I’ll get the graph paper.

What Do Planner Pages and Fiction Genres Have in Common?

annabowling Leave a comment

Still not the actual planner post, but getting closer, and, seeing as how we are over the midway point of the month, I may let this suffice and move on along because the start of yet another new month will be here before I know it.

The fact that Wednesday’s post is the first of the week should tell you all how Monday went. Nuff said about that. Let’s move on to better stuff, and by that, I mean planners and how they relate to the writing life. Last night was a big one at Stately Bowling Manor, because I learned two very important things that have me chittering like a cat at a bird sanctuary. Thing One is that the printer is now up and running, and Thing Two is that I finally figured out the exact difference between A6 and half-letter size. For the non-planner-obsessed, this sounds like Charlie Brown Adult speech. For those more planner-obsessed than myself, this may elicit a heartfelt “duh.”

If standard letter size paper is one sheet of the stuff one puts into the printer, then it follows that half-letter is half of that (folded short end to short end, specifically) and fits quite nicely into the mini binders sold at many chain office supply and/or megastores. A5 paper is the kind commonly sold for ring bound planners. Half letter paper is generally, in my experience, sold three-hole-punched, while A5 comes most commonly punched with six holes (I have seen some punched with four holes, but very seldom, and have not actually used any of those…yet.) The two are pretty darned close in size, which leads to the impression that they are interchangeable. The embarrassingly large amount of paper in my scrap file will attest. That paper will get repurposed, because I don’t like waste, but let’s move on with this bit o’ blabber.

In a reveal that surprises no-one, I love all things planner-related, and am not (yet) independently wealthy. Also, I have what we will call strong preferences. This would intimate that making my own inserts and fillers might be a good way to both save money and expand creativity. This also is where that scrap paper comes into play, or should i say existence. After longer than I would be proud to admit, of assuming that A) A5 and half letter are totally the same size, and B) the firm conviction that I have so been punching the paper according to the manufacturer’s instructions, I also took into account C) depth perception is part of my visual impairment. Maybe I might want to actually check out the dimensions the way it makes sense to me? What could it hurt?

So, going on the pro tip on how to tell black from navy blue (hold the color in question next to something that you 100$ know is black) I took a manufactured A5 page and a manufactured half letter page, each obviously different colors, put the one I suspected was smaller (spoiler: it’s A5) in front, and tapped them on a level surface (kitchen table.) Lo and behold, there it was, a bright white strip of paper above the colored A5 sheet. Mark the difference, remove the excess, punch holes, and…wait for it…boom, they line up with the manufactured A5 paper holes. This then segued into a frenzy of paper cutting and punching, culminating in me sitting back, contented as a cat in cream, looking at my handiwork.

Goodbye, pricey inserts in two different sizes. Hello, making whatever the heck I want, whenever the heck I want it. I’m off-leash at last, no fences, baby, woo. Except for the one teeny, small, infinitesimal complication that I do not have the first idea of how to create my own insert or filler, on the computer, which does throw a bit of a spanner in the works. Not a biggie, as I will figure it out, through a process of trial and error, and picking the hive mind of the interwebs. . There have to be templates out there somewhere, and where there’s templates, there’s historicals…er, tutorials. Total typo there, but I’m going to let it stand, because I am headed in that direction anyway.

But Anna, I hear those of you who live in my head asking, what does all of this have to do with writing commercial fiction? I am glad you asked that, people who live in my head, because that is an excellent question, and one I have been asking myself, until the answer naturally surfaced. Paper size is a lot like genre, in a sense. Sure, A5 and half letter may look the same to the casual viewer, and how big a difference can it be, anyway? As a quick inspection proves, quite a bit. One thing can’t fit in a container made for the other, but when we know what size is what and where all the holes are supposed to be (get your minds out of the gutter) the whole thing goes rather smoothly, and the creative mind can flood with ideas of fun things to do in all those lovely different sizes.

Some spreads that are perfect for A5 would never work in a half letter, or vice versa. Add in personal size, which is a heck of a lot smaller, but still fun and useful, and we’re talking a whole different story. Pun intentional. THat’s only talking ringbound. If we add traveler’s notebooks into the mix (strings rather than rings) we have whole new options, and whole new requirements. Do I love notebooks in general? Yes, with a wild, burning passion. Is there one objectively best format or size? Well, best for what? I’d need to ask some questions here. It’s the same for romance fiction. I would assume every other genre as well, or there wouldn’t be a need for both high and low fantasy (to say nothing of urban) cozy vs hard-boiled mysteries, hard vs soft SFscience fiction (if I’m using a wrong term for  different types of a single a genre, please let me know) and so forth.

A composition size planner is not going to fit in a tiny evening bag, and a bound notebook is not going to allow me to move pages around with ease. Genre is kind of like that. A light, humorous romance is not going to make me weep from angst leading to the HEA, while an epic historical is not going to be the best choice for a quick read that will give a case of the giggles. To paraphrase the late, great Eugenia Price, not all writers are going to please all readers. That’s why there are so many of us. I am more than okay with that.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am off to a chain office supply store to buy printer ink. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.


Typing With Stuffed Paws: The (Stuffed) Cat Came Back Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Greetings, foolish mortals. Sebastian Thunderpaws Hart-Bowling, coming at you with all the stuff for the past, uh, while. Now that Writer Chick is no longer a galley slave, and has met her deadline, that gives her more time for other things, like checking to make sure I’m doing my share around here. Eh. I had a good run, and by run, I mean napping through the last couple of Fridays. Anyway, Dude is home today, he’s warm, and pretty good at napping, hi own self, so I think you know where this is going. Catnaps are always best when taken with actual cats, amirite?

Anyway, to speed us in that direction, let’s get down to business. First, as always, Writer Chick was at Buried Under Romance this past Saturday, and she wants your recommendations of books that might whet her reading appetite. Click here, or the caption below, if you think you might be able to help, or if you like hearing her ramble or whatever. Click for no reason, if you want. I’m not the boss of you.

Seriously, Writer Chick wants to know.

As for what Writer Chick is reading, she’s working on getting back into the swing of the whole Goodreads challenge deal. Right now, she’s only three books behind, at twenty-three out of ninety-five books, which puts her at twenty-four percent of the way to her goal. Adequate progress, but y’know, weekend, TBR, all that stuff. Make it happen, Writer Chick.

Writer Chick has made some noise about making a list of library books, to keep in one of her planners, to get around the whole thing of figuring out she has to give back a bunch of books she didn’t get a chance to read, and can’t renew them, because they were renewed already, and Dude may or may not be teasing her about what he calls the “mini rage.” Lists and goals and stuff make her happy anyway. There could possibly be stickers involved. As long as the stickers don’t come in contact with my fur, then I don’t have a problem. If they do, well, let’s say that Writer Chick might get a chance to find out why my middle name is Thunderpaws. That’s all I’m saying.

Maybe new candles are the key to posting more pictures…

There’s also the whole Instagram thing. Seriously slacking on that one, Writer Chick. There may need to be some sort of Instagram progress chart to keep her going on this one. One the one paw, I am an excellent model, because, in addition to being handsome and orange, I am awesome at posing. By posing, I mean sitting still. Unlike poo cats, I do not walk off in the middle of the shoot, and, really, she should be taking advantage of that. There has been some buzz about taking me out on location shoots. Props may be involved. Not sure how I feel about this, but Writer Chick tells me it’s part of the whole Cat Regent thing, so I suppose I can go along until they find a suitable poo cat.

Peace out,

Technology Is Not My Friend

annabowling Leave a comment

Last night, the battery in my phone died. This phone has been through harsher things that sitting in the charger. This is the phone where Skye became a gamer kitty, the phone that helped me set a goal of hitting one thousand Instagram posts (yeah, that one’s on hold) and hung out with me during long stretches of insomnia. It’s the phone with all those pictures of Skye on it(but yay Google Photos, for having it all.) This was also the phone I was counting on for some casual scrolling and possibly Kindle app reading before bed, so its ultimate fading to black was not what I had in mind. Time to call in reinforcements.

Those who have known me for a while, also know my history with electronics, which may point in the direction of this piece is going. I first retrieved my old PC laptop, the pink one I still love, and, someday, plan to find if there is a way to make it work without having the screen at an angle that is best described with this symbol: <

she does not display this much screen when open this far, these days

That is the angle at which I have to have the screen, if I want to be able to see it, not complete blackness. I already have the phone for that. The MacBook Pro will probably be fine after I take care of that three beep thing, which should be an easy fix, but not very helpful in the middle of the night, when I want to do some casual scrolling to wind down. Next solution was to boot my elderly tablet, which spent most of its time reminding me that it’s been a while since I turned it on, and that I have changed several passwords in the interim. Also that Google app is not responding. Google app is not responding. Google app is not responding. Etc. At least Spotify worked, so that was a happy ending in the short term.

As soon as I can stop the triple beep, this baby is back in business

The longer term solution will likely be an easy one, as well. Easy fixes for the laptop issue, acquire new phone, and then comes the phase of the process that I actually consider fun. What is the aesthetic of this new device going to be? We’re talking wallpapers, screensavers, possibly themes, if I want to go whole hog on this kind of thing, There’s arranging all my must-haves, like Spotify, my photo apps, Sims FreePlay (why did you have to die in the middle of the chocolatier quest, phone? Do you not understand the depth of my desire for that gingerbread house furniture? Have you learned nothing from the fact that my ice house has no kitchen or bathroom because those items are now locked until the next ice quest comes around again? I have staying power. I can wait, but not if all my Sims die because I can’t get to them.) and Netflix.

Hot pink bag in the bottom left corner holds my tablet. Purple case holds my Kindle, which is fine.

I will qualify this by saying that A) Netflix is still Mehflix (this is totally me, not them) and B) I can access Netflix on other devices, most notably the desktop on which I currently write, but this is the principle of the thing. I cannot take the desktop to the comfy end of the couch, and I definitely can’t tuck it in my planner and take it out into the wide, wild world. Or laundry room, because there’s that, too.

Umm, Anna, I hear a voice saying, isn’t this a good time to table the electronics thing and focus on reading paper books, and/or doing art in the un-phonable time? You don’t even like using the phone as a phone, so, y’know…not seeing the giant problem here. That voice, by the way, is probably me. I have a love/hate relationship with electronics, and I probably always will. I got dragged kicking and screaming to my first ever computer, and now I can’t imagine writing without one, even if I do usually (read: almost always) compose in longhand first. Skype allows me to collaborate with Melva, face to face, when two hundred miles apart, and Skype on the phone means I can go into the only room in our apartment where I can shut the door and not have to work around another human, while Skyping: the bathroom.

Since this is a need, we’ll be taking care of it soon, and, before long, I will be introducing the new electronic device, and/or reintroducing the restored one. This is not a question, but a fact. In the meantime, I have galleys to scour, and there is still the tick tick tick of the clock counting down to the Z Publishing anthology deadline. I am pretty comfortable with that.

TLDR version of this whole thing: Phone died. I wanted to kvetch. I have kvetched. Back to the galleys I go. (Also, if I don’t respond to messages right away, refer to whole phone thing above.)

Typing With Stuffed Paws: Anything That Doesn’t Look Like An Umbrella Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Greetings, foolish mortals. Sebastian Thunderpaws Hart-Bowling coming at you, with some of the stuff of the week that was, with special guest, Writer Chick. Why is Writer Chick here on Friday? Easy. She went to what Skye’s notes refer to as the people vet, and there was apparently medicine involved and she forgot what day was what day, and here we are. Anyway, what that means is that she did most of my work for me, so I will drop her link to last week’s Buried Under Romance here, and hand it on over.

Read it here.

Writer Chick also read this book, and will be reading these:

Current library TBR

I will pause (or paws) here for some fur-sonal maintenance, while Writer Chick has her say. Here’s the picture she had as her header:

The header that would have been….

Interior, coffee shop, day.

Two women, A and N, sit in a booth, with hot beverages and various art materials. Both hold pencils in hand, blank pages in front of them. A traces around the base of a plastic to-go lid, then sections the circle into pie-like sections.

N: (peers at A’s page) Is that your umbrella?

A: Hopefully.

N: Do you know how to draw an umbrella?

A: (deadpan) Yes. Erase everything that doesn’t look like an umbrella. :flips the lid, to add small arches to the inner edges of the circle, then erases parts of outer circle that do not look like an umbrella:

Annnd scene. :curtsies:

This scene, as you may have guessed, comes, as the best dramas do, from real life. Real life, in this case, meaning my real life, and my weekly breakfast with N. This week, it was an artist’s date (artists’ date, as there were two of us?) N brought the wrong paper, so ended up doing her sketch on regular notebook paper (spoiler: it looked fabulous anyway, and I want real versions of the dresses she sketched, please and thank you.

I, as promised, brought my new water=soluble crayons and watercolor paper, along with a pack of baby wipes (for the smushing around of colors) and mechanical pencil (for the drawing of things,) metal ruler (for the drawing of straight things) and fancy eraser (for erasing of drawn things that are in the wrong place.) The umbrella thing was a passing mention. IT’s for the cover image of my April monthly planner section, so, really, all I needed to do was sketch, and N wanted to see how the water-soluble crayons worked, and the background kind of happened on its own. The black blob in the corner was supposed to be another umbrella, but that didn’t work out so well, so now it’s…a shadow? Ominous cloud? Artistic license? Yeah, I’ll go with that.

We both drew, as we talked about writing, and both put some color on the pages. N had woodless colored pencils. These are new to me, and I am guessing they are colored pencil guts without the usual casing. I paid attention to the way she held the pencils (she is an artist of some years’ standing) and how she lay down the color, while I scribbled and glopped crayon onto my paper, then attacked it with baby wipes, turning aimless scribbles into soft washes that built on each other. We talked about stories we’d both like to write, vague terms for me, more specific ones for her, and the domestic tornadoes whirring through both our families, thankfully at lower levels.

When Mr. N came to retrieve us, he asked, as he always does, if we had a good meeting. N, as she always does, said that we did. She waxed (pun intended) rhapsodic about the crayons, and the store at which they might be purchased. Mr. N is, himself, an artist, so this is relevant to his interests as well. In time, they dropped me home. I touched base with Real Life Romance Hero, then dug out marker paper, to try the same design on another surface. Yep. Still works.

N did suggest that I could tilt the umbrella, to show it from an angle instead of straight on, and I may try that, later, but, for today, I am content to say that yes, I do know how to draw an umbrella. At least this umbrella, and that’s all I really need to know. Okay, except for the size of the monthly divider, but I can tackle that one another day.

TL:DR: Yes, I can draw an umbrella. Yes, this applies to writing. Yes, I am being purposely vague because I have to be out the door in five minutes. I have a picture of an umbrella, though, even with color, and a mood, from a certain perspective, and I am confident that I can draw it again. I can also write books. This is very useful, because I am a writer. Tell the story and don’t worry about all the fiddly other stuff.

Yeah, so that’s about it. I will direct Writer Chick back to one of her multiple calendars, and, hopefully, things will be back on track next week.


Peace Out,

Digging Out

annabowling Leave a comment

Here we are, once again at Monday. The cold is mostly gone (mostly,) and there is a whole lot of snow outside. The temperature is in the butt cold range, and Real Life Romance Hero is home today, as his place of employment would rather their people not freeze, so this is not as solitary as I would have expected for the day when job one is to figure out how I am going to dig out from basically a week spent away from “real” writing work.

This, of course, begs the question, what is real writing work? Snow is my favorite weather, which is a plus for someone living in NY, during winter. Everything crisp and clean and sparkly, is one of my favorite sights. Because I live in a city, this also means that clean and white and sparkly does not last very long. There are piles of greyish brown ice, puddles of yellow from local canines, odd bits of twigs and shed evergreen needles, trash, and probably a few things that we would all prefer not to itemize. It is kind of like that with writing.

Having a cold like the one that moved in with our family means that butt in chair and fingers on keyboard is not always going to happen, but there is no law against bringing pen and paper to bed. Which is, no surprise, something I do anyway, and, sometimes, all that pen and paper do is sit there while I sleep. They also sit there while I don’t-sleep, because I have hit a thread of insomnia.

Insomnia and colds have a few things in common, namely that the person is in bed, but not having a lot of fun, but they are both well served by a pair of earbuds and audiobooks. Even though the books available at the click of a button (Overdrive) are a sliver of what’s available in the wider world, having a selection of books available in an instant, where I can crawl into my blanket fort and have somebody read me a story, is good for both body and soul.

In the best of all possible worlds, there would be a sort of air lock between sick days, or snow days, or sick days followed by snow days, and regular writing days/return to everyday life after several days of being out of the norm. All of that stuff I’d wanted to do over the sick week, was still there when I got up this morning, and, at first glance, it did look like big chunks of gray and brown ice, with all the traditional accoutrements.

There’s the part of the process that is standing in the middle of the mess, hands on hips, aghast at how much accumulated in my functional absence. Then there’s the “how do I do this stuff again?” portion of our day. Obviously, I can do this, because I was in the middle of doing it when the cold dragged me under, and the snow snowed me under. That snow, though, is still sparkly and pretty and fun to play in, even though there are big icebergs in the middle of the parking lot, so it’s enough to get my boots and mittens on, and tread outside.

Since there is a parking area outside our building, instead of going straight to the sidewalk, none of the actual tenants (aka me) actually have to shovel. This means my back is safe (from that.) I know, I know, I am rambling, and need to get back to the writing things. That, as things would turn out, is exactly what I am doing, rambling down these bunny trails. This is the time to slap everything on the page and/or screen and then see what sticks, afterwards.

A lot of that is messy, but, if I keep at it long enough, the order begins to appear. Today, I swept the crusty tissues and books to be put away “later,” from the coffee table near my desk, and arranged the desk organizer thingies, acquired before the storm, and let my brain free float. Part of that was expressly so that I could follow up on YouTube videos I’d watched, on sick days, about better use of Instagram, aka, the social media platform that appeals to me most, at present. Does using a white board to reflect light, and taking the picture in front of natural light, get rid of the yellow tint that has plagued my pictures for a while now? Could be.


How are you digging out of the weekend?

The Daily Thunderstorm

annabowling Leave a comment

Welcome to the daily thunderstorm. Such is August in New York’s Capitol Region. I don’t mind it. Actually, the booms and flashes and wet stuff are my favorite part of a summer day, apart from the part where day turns into night. Night, as it were, is not far off, or at least the part of the day where I have uninterrupted writing time. Which, technically, never happened, as I am not alone at home today, with Real Life Romance Hero in residence. Housemate will be home within the half hour, so, realistically, this is probably going to get posted tomorrow, rather than today, because that’s the way things go. It probably doesn’t help that, because I am still figuring out the Mac, which will probably include a Safari upgrade, I am relying on YouTube for my musical accompaniment, and, well, how can I possibly listen to Mykal Kilgore sing Drew Gasparini’s “I Loved You Too Much” without actually watching the video? I’m only human. Or Mykal Kilgore singing “Disaster,” also by Drew Gasparini. Okay, fine, any video that has both names in it is one I really should not be playing when I am meant to be writing.

There are different types of writing. Blogging, I can do with family mucking about. Usually. There are always exceptions. Some things, I can do in bits and snatches, propped on a pile of pillows at the end of an air mattress (non-leaky variety) with the Mac on my lap desk, and legs contorted in what is probably not a real yoga position (writer pose? is that a thing?) Other things require complete silence and solitude (though true fact, for me, that’s not a lot) and yet others need to be where I am alone among people. This is one of the reasons there is part of my brain devoted to figuring out what bus route will drop my at my favorite coffee house, because I miss that place, and the atmosphere, but writing is one of those things that can be done in an endless variety of places.

For now, I’ll go with the sound of the actual thunderstorm as my background music. We’re close enough to the road that I can hear one of my top three sounds of all time, cars driving on wet asphalt. (The others, in case anybody was wondering, are RLRH snoring, and Skye crunching her treat) Part of my brain is working on my Drama King assignment for the week, as Melva and I will have our weekly meeting in person, as part of my retreat. Blabbering here actually lets another part of my brain work on other things (aka fiction writing) on the back burner, and a lot of issues sort themselves out that way, so I won’t complain about that, either.

Preparations for said upcoming retreat are underway, which is, in itself, part of said retreat. Once I decide what’s coming with me, (and after I do laundry, because clothes covered in dry sweat are not conducive to either rest or creativity) that’s committing to what I’ll have on hand for the time that I’m away. As with the last retreat, there will be no internet. This is not as scary as it was the first time, especially, since I remind myself that I spent the majority of my life, at least half of it, in a time when the internet did not even exist, so it’s a pretty good shot that I will be able o survive. Not so sure about my Sims Free Play Sims, but not going to give that too much emotional energy.

This will be the first trip with the Mac, and I’m looking forward to that. Skye is still the main draw, of course, but picking out the right books, the right DVDs (I figure a couple of movies, and one season of a TV series should do me fine) – those are important. What I bring is what I’ve got, and I need to have a plan in mind. Four books seems about right (plus Kindle and charger, because one never knows) and morning and evening pages books. There are two pocket size inserts for Li’l Pink, headed my way. They should arrive by Friday, which is perfect, because we should be hitting the road Saturday morning, and having a whole weekend to set up a pocket sized planner, which includes but is not limited to copying vital information from Big to Li’l Pink, that’s about as good as it gets for planning. Which definitely means I need to make sure I bring the right planning supplies, or I will be kicking myself for the entire retreat.

Well, not the entire retreat. There will be Skye, and there will be Melva, and there will be a decent sized TV, with nobody to fight me for the remote. There will be books and my shiny new computer, and all my imaginary friends, and a fully stocked kitchen, and maybe, possibly, there will be thunderstorms. If not, There’s always downloaded ambient sound.

 

 

 

Rambling, Beneath The Roses

annabowling Leave a comment

Welp, one day behind on the blogging thing, the photo editor I usually use is giving me guff (but on multiple machines, so it’s probably them and not me) and the picture I thought I was going to use for a different sort of header, I did not actually take as a photo, but sent as a direct message to a friend. It’s that kind of day. Right now, I am in my newest writing nook, which probably will not be permanent but it sure is comfy.

There is now a full sized air mattress taking up most of the living room. I have an armrest pillow in place, and the head of the mattress is flush with the wall, so I do have back support. The new futon/bed is in the bedroom, which feels kind of inside-out-y, but I’m going to roll with it. My house, my rules right? The mattress is also directly below the three rosebush plants (mini variety,) York, Tudor, and Lancaster, (white, red and white, and red, respectively) that captured my heart on Saturday morning. Appropriate plant life for a historical romance writer, if there ever was such a thing.

The weather is pretty darned decent (by my standards) today. Light rain, off and on, temperate enough that I can actually cover my flesh without feeling smothered, and, maybe most important of all, cool enough for tea. A sign of autumn to come? I sure hope it is, because I am pretty much (i.e. totally) done with summer. Seeing as how we’re at the end of July, that is not surprising. There is a lot on my mind, these days, so I’m going to put a bunch of it here, and get along with my day.

First off, I have a new item to add to the Coming Soon page. My essay, “Greetings From Boxville,” will appear in the New York’s Emerging Writers nonfiction anthology, from Z Publishing. I angsted a lot about that essay, then finally wrote what basically amounts to a blog entry, and sent that sucker on its way. This may be something to remember; when in doubt, do what comes naturally.

There is Chasing Prince Charming news. Melva and I agreed, on Monday, that we are done-done with this draft, and it is going back out into the wide world at the end of the week. Eep. Been a while since this kind of thing has happened, but it’s exciting, too, this regaining of the metaphorical stride. Melva and I are taking two weeks off to work on individual projects, and write down notes on Drama King, then come back together and get that story back in gear. This time, we know how we write a book together, along with each other’s strengths and not-so-strengths, and the story world is no longer uncharted territory.

Sleep has been, for the past couple of weeks, to use a technical term, poopy. Last night was my first good, full, night’s sleep in a while, and I appreciate the heck out of that. I could use a few more nights like that, aka all of them. Cooler temperatures help, but the fact that I could get up this morning and make tea, without feeling as though I had to drag my own corpse from wherever I was when I figured sleep was not going to happen, so may as well have caffiene, followed by midmorning crash, is enough to put a bounce in my step. Hence the actual blogging.

When I am done with this, there will be fiction writing, which, right now, feels like a rare treat. I had hoped to use July to outline the selkie story, but that’s not what happened, though I still want that story to happen, as well as A Moment Past Midnight. Not sure, right now, I I want to target one of those for November and NaNo, wait until Her Last First Kiss is at the end of its second draft. I’ll figure it out.

Sometimes, a change of perspective can be a good thing. There’s probably something to be said for being closer to the ground when I write, these days. The desk I’ve loved as long as I can remember, with accompanying office chair, is still in storage, and looks like they will remain there until we move to the next place, so finding where my writing space is, in this apartment, is of paramount importance. A lot of us writers are going to have a lot of different writing places in our lives. Yesterday, Housemate asked me if I missed Old Apartment. I said no. I miss having Skye home from camp, and I miss going to my favorite coffee house to write (which I can still do; it’s only a bus ride away) whenever I wanted it, but it was time to make a change.

Sometimes, it’s like that with writing. There are times to strike out and try something new, and then there are times when the best thing to do is go home. Sometimes, those two things can happen at the same time. Funny how that works. I love it when things that shouldn’t fit together, do, and in the very best of ways. Is this a new season of that starting? Hope so.

Blabbity Blab, Theory and Practice

annabowling Leave a comment

Helpful hint: going out to do laundry and run errands in the freezing rain does not hasten Martian Death Cold out the door any more quickly. Even so, I think I’m going to live. Right now, I’m at my desk, the too-bright sun that comes after yesterday’s lovely greyness, poking through the slats in the blinds. Wind is whipping the branches outside. The big candle is pretty well burned down, which means it is probably time for a new big candle, or at least a nice votive or tealight. My mug is empty now, and I am debating whether it is time to put the kettle on for more tea, or to grab my water bottle.

In short, it’s a winter Monday. Outside my closed office door, there are cat and Real Life Romance Hero. On today’s schedule: this blog entry, then work on the second batch of edits/rewrites for Chasing Prince Charming. I have my weekly Skype conference with Melva tonight, and breakfast with N tomorrow, so I need to get some Her Last First Kiss in there somewhere. The temptation to burrow into a blanket nest and binge watch the remaining episodes of Les Revenants (creepy French drama, on Netflix, which I deeply love, and will probably gush about in more detail at a later date) is strong, though not as strong as the biggest lesson I took away from this past weekend’s CR-RWA meeting; treat writing like a business.

That means that writing time is writing time, and nothing else happens during that time. New rule for this week: blog entries get one hour of my writing time, maximum. This may result, at least in the near future, to an increase in free form rambling, but that kind of stuff tends to sort itself out in time, with the right amount of practice.

My original plan was to have a defined topic for this blog entry, but I got to sleep at the lovely hour of four in the morning, because Martian Death Cold does not respect circadian rhythms, and I am burning too-bright daylight here.  I am looking forward to seeing what Melva has don e on this next chunk of Chasing Prince Charming, and what notes she’s made on my segments, so I can do my share in making a good thing even better. I actually like rewriting. Sometimes, I like rewriting more than writing. There’s less pressure, and I’m not as concerned about making everything perfect, as I am when creating a first draft.

That seems somewhat backward, as the whole point of revising/rewriting is to make the writing better, but go figure. Writers are weird. Granted, we are at the part of the book where there are not a lot of changes to make, and we are likely approaching the section that is going to need the most work. Stay tuned for that one, because there will probably be much to say on that matter.  There may or may not be muffled sobbing at some point, but we have our sights set on the end of March to get the whole thing spiffed and back to the lovely people at The Wild Rose Press, and we’ll see how that goes.

For today, I have fewer than two hundred words to get to my magic seven hundred, which, thanks to some scheduling math, figured out in the margins of my notes from Saturday’s CRRWA meeting, now means at least seven hundred words in sixty minutes, tops. This is where preparation would come in super handy, So would another bag of sugar free cherry cough drops, because I recently squeezed said bag, and the cough drop count has gone down to three. I am good on tissues, though, which may come in handy if I hit on any especially emotional parts of the manuscript this afternoon. I would give it fairly high odds, because I know this story, I know Melva, and I know me. It’s pretty much a sure thing, and I am more than okay with that.

Almost to the magic seven hundred. I want to promise that Wednesday’s post will be more structured (unless anybody actually looks forward to my free-form rambles, in which case, today is your day. Break out the bubbly.) Blabbity blab, theory and practice, hey, look, there we go, enough words now. Time to open the file and see what wonders may be wrought.

TheWriterIsOut