writing process

Typing With Wet Claws: Heart of a Storyteller, Hand of a Smurf Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Anty wanted me to get this post up early in the morning, but that is not what happened, for a couple of reasons. First, it is sometimes hard for Anty to get to sleep when it is hot and muggy (I do not have that problem, thankfully. I can sleep anytime.) Then, when she finally did (after helping Mama to give me my pill, which I do not like) she crashed, hard. Then she remembered she had a lot of things to do, the first of which was dealing with my stuff. All I will say is that I hit the trifecta today. It is a good thing Anty has puppy pads and Febreeze. Also, Anty had to do laundry, and, because it was late, it was while a lot of people were there, instead of no people, which makes for a different experience, and crabbier Anty. Anyway, if you are wondering why this is showing up in the afternoon instead of the morning, that is why.

Because part of our deal is that I have to talk about Anty’s writing first, I will do that now. She has been busy. First, her Buried Under Romance post on the struggle of getting into a book that isn’t quite working is here, and it looks like this:

 

BUR

Anty loves when readers leave comments. She will even answer them.

 

Anty also wrote a review of a book she found very interesting, If I Fall, by Lauren Oliver. That book got Anty thinking about voice, emotion, and characterization, a lot. Her review is here and it looks like this:

GOODREADS

Yes, Anty is pondering how this could work in historical romance.

For actual fiction writing, this has been a good week, too, summerbrain not withstanding. On Tuesday, when Anty met with Miss N, Anty had the hands of a smurf, because she is still learning how to refill fountain pens. Also because she had a blueberry bagel, but, mostly, it was the ink. Not only did she get ink on her hands while filling her pen, but when she took off the cap, she shot a stream of inky blue water all the way across the table, because she had not gotten all of the water out when she rinsed the nib. I did not see that, because that was at Panera and I was at home, but there is a picture, so I will share that with you here:

IMG_20160726_120710 (1)

Heart of a storyteller, hand of a smurf.

Anty finds that writing in longhand is her very best way to get the ideas out of her head and into readable form. She is also very thankful that first drafts are supposed to be rough, because this one is. That is okay. She is laying down the foundation, and she can go back and make it pretty later (even though she likes to do the actual writing on pretty paper; you cannot see it much in this picture, but her paper is very pretty. The design is mostly on the borders, and her writing is in the middle.) Right now is when she follows her characters around and writes down what they do. This is not the time to be concerned about whether the language is entirely period specific, so it is okay if she has a character respond with “FML” after something very, very, very inconvenient happens. That is exactly what she did, actually; she can go back after the draft is done and translate that to its eighteenth century equivalent. She can also go back and figure out how Heroine’s very young half-sibling would address her in a letter, especially since English is not the half-sibling’s first language. That would be Russian, for those who were wondering.

Yesterday, Anty did remember her notes, and they amounted to a lot more than she thought that she did. She did not want to have to stop working on the book to take care of other things, but I have a very persuasive “feed me” face. Please refer to today’s picture, in case you have any doubts about that. There were other things she had to do, as well, including reading, because story in means story out, but I think it was mostly my “feed me” face, even though she was at the coffee house and I was at  home. My “feed me” face is that strong, trust me on this. Even so, Anty still has Hero and Heroine hanging around her brain, talking to her whether or not it is writing time. That is when she knows she has hit her stride and is on the right track.

Since Anty is making her “I need the computer” face at me, that should probably be about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

 

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

This Is My Brain On Summer

annabowling 2 Comments

I had plans for this afternoon. I was going to head to my favorite coffee house, with the legal pad on which I’d written stuff for two scenes of Her Last First Kiss, and transcribe in air conditioned comfort, directly under a ceiling fan. Good in theory failure in execution. The hitch? I left the legal pad at home. Since I live less than a full block away, there was the temptation to ask the barista to hang onto my iced tea while I raced back home, but I am not racing anywhere in this heat. I’m already sun and heat sensitive, and not going outside any more than I absolutely have to until this heat dome lifts.

So, today went to plan B. I had some Beach Ball work to do, and switched gears to take care of that. First up, check on the comments Melva gave on the chapter I sent her. Which cut off a full two pages early than the actual scene. Okay. Find backup copy, pray it has the missing pages (it did) and send off the correct version, as well as the compiled document with all of our scenes in it. These are more or less in order, and, seeing them together, criminy crikes, this is a book. Still in the gestational stage, but definitely a book. Guy and Girl (to differentiate from Hero and Heroine) have got to their first threshold of contact. Plot arc and romance arc progressing, historical adjacent stuff inserted at the proper (we think) time, and seeds for future things planted. This is all a good thing. Not what I had planned for the day, but I am calling it good. I can pick up on what I wanted to work on today, tomorrow, and the world will not  end. Doing things in a different order is still doing them, so forward we go.

Possibly into the babbling portion of this blog entry, because this is the last thing on my list for the day. It was going to be one of the first things, but see mention of doing things out of order. There are times, when the unrelenting heat stays unrelenting, that the only thing to do is plunk one’s feet in cold water and crack open a book somebody else wrote. When putting story out isn’t working, take story in; refill the well. A reading break, if nothing else, gets my mind into story mode, in general, which is a good thing .

When the heat gets too high, and invites its BFF, humidity, along for the ride, it can be difficult to slog through the brainmelt and actually get stuff done. Interesting timing there, with this brainmelt arriving the same time I’m getting my stride back, writing wise, but that’s how things work, I suppose. Resistance builds strength and all that. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Story, story, story, story, story, story, story. That’s my happy place, any time of year, and slipping into storyworld makes consecutive days of 90plus temperatures somewhat more bearable.

As my mother used to tell me, the more I do, the more I’ll want to do, and she’s right. Every morning, I drag myself to the morning pages, even when I have no idea what I want to put on those pages. It’s the discipline that’s building the practice. This is telling my brain that this is what we’re going to be doing for the majority of the day. The pretty pages mean my eyes want to stay on those pages, and good thing, because I have two more notebooks by the same makers, to take up when I finish this one. Okay, one and a half, really, as I’d tried using one of them for one thing, and that Did Not Work Out. That, though, was before I discovered rollerballs and fountain pens, so that notebook is only resting for a little while.

Exercising any muscle makes it stronger, which is why I set myself the discipline of three blogs per week. Okay, two, but getting a cat to write the third one for me is pretty darned creative all on its own, so credit there, surely.

Allrightyroo, that is the magic 700 words, so this blog entry is d-o-n-e, done. Tomorrow, Hero and Heroine, tomorrow, I am coming for you. For now, air conditioning and reading break. Toodles.

 

 

 

One of Those Scenes

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Monday again, and I am mostly winging this entry, because A) “blog entry” is the next thing on my list, B) it’s almost lunchtime, and C) I am eager to get to one of those scenes in Her Last First Kiss.  By “one of those scenes,” I do not mean a love scene (in this case.) This is not a kissing scene (but it does get Hero and Heroine set up for their first kiss, aka the titular smoochification.) Heroine is not kindly disposed toward Hero at this point, who has no idea why she’s angry, but she’s about to fix all that.

This was actually one of the first scenes that came to me, when I was first stirring the idea soup for this book. That was back in the magpie stage, collecting every shiny thing that caught my storyeye, even if I didn’t know how they would all fit together in the end. Didn’t matter. It looked good, in it went. Musical playlists, pictures of interesting faces, places, assorted objects, historical costume (though I’ve accepted that the Georgian era seems to be my current default, for the time being, there’s still probably always going to be that phase of flipping through the dress of different eras before a hero or heroine tells me they’d wear this or that, and then I know for sure when the story is set. I once had to hunt down a whole setting from the hat that story’s heroine wore when she first presented herself. That was, alas, one of the stories in suspended animation, but it will wake at the right time. By now, I’ve learned how to tell which stories are likely to wake and which ones aren’t.) – well, okay, that was a bunny trail. New paragraph, because I have no idea where I was going with this now. Told you I was going to babble. Well, wing it, which is basically the same thing. For those who have been wondering, this is basically what I do in my morning pages book, too.

Right, back to the scene. This is one that has definitely come in layers. The first version took place on pretty much a bare stage, because my scenes often do that. With my involvement in theater when I was in school, this makes perfect sense. Run the whole production over and over and over, from table read to blocking to rehearsals to dress rehearsals to hair and makeup checks, to tech, and then the performance. Maybe that carried over into writing books. All I know is that this is how I work, so I wasn’t too bothered that the  movie screen in my head showed Hero and Heroine going at it (not that way; told you this isn’t a love scene…well, not that kind of love scene; love scenes don’t always mean sex scenes, but again, another topic for another day) on a blank stage with only the barest of props.

That’s all I needed at that time. The rest could build from there. Big prop tells me what Hero has been doing with his time when he’s not onstage. Small props that Heroine carries with her tell me not only how she’s feeling, but where she was immediately prior to making her entrance. Girl’s got a plan here, and dude does not have a clue, though he soon will, and that clue is only going to raise more questions. I love this scene, because it’s so them. It hurts both of them, pretty darned badly, but it also sets them up for moving toward something better. Not immediately, because this is a romance novel, and they can’t be completely happy until the very end (got that covered already; you’ll be fine, guys) but enough to give that spark of hope that maybe, maybe, the way they’ve thought life had to go isn’t really the only option there is. Of course, since we aren’t at the very end yet, taking that chance means making other things go horribly, horribly wrong, but it’s all part of the journey, and I’m eager to get on with this one.

That’s a good feeling, and it’s been a long time getting to where writing felt this good again. Far from perfect, and if I had my druthers, I’d have had this happen a long time before now, but maybe, like with Hero and Heroine, all the steps between where I once was and where I’m getting to now, were needed. Strengthening weak muscles, learning new things, adding new colors to the palette or new tools to the toolbox. New steps to the repertoire. All I know is that it’s Monday, and, instead of whacking my head against the keyboard, or putting out breadcrumbs, hoping to lure my characters closer, there they are, tapping their feet and sending me “hey, get over here, we want to talk to you” looks. I call that a good day.

 

Typing With Wet Claws: Autumn is Coming Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for my regular Feline Friday post. I would like to send out a big thank you to everybody who checked in to see how I have been doing since my big vet adventure last week. As you can see, I am not wearing the cone of shame, and my, um, stuff, has all been regular for the whole week. My humans have been shooting bad-tasting liquid into my mouth twice a day. They tell me it keeps infection away, which I do not fully understand, but they do feed me immediately after that, and I do understand food.

Since I am feeling much better now, Anty says I have to go back to talking about her writing first. This week, she is a little embarrassed (and by a little, I meant that she went down into the  neck of  her t-shirt like a turtle when she realized this and made a sound I am not sure I have heard before) that she did not post anywhere about her Buried Under Romance discussion post. She was excited about this topic, too, but then my butt exploded, which was pretty distracting for everybody, so I think she is allowed an oops on this one. In case you missed it, and you probably did, because she did not post anywhere, (but people who commented, you made Anty’s day) the discussion on treasures of the used bookstores is here and it looks like this:

BURSCREENSHOT

Apologies for the black part at the bottom. The crop tool is difficult to use when you have paws instead of hands.

 

This week, Anty has been hard at work on her turn with the Beach Ball. Anty Melva showed Anty the scene she had written, which made Anty take another look at her own scene, and want to change some things about it. Anty loves working with Anty Melva, so she does not mind, and then new scene will probably be better than the one she had originally written. It could have picked better timing, though, because Anty is feeling a little sluggish herself, something she gets when she is stressed and does not get enough sleep. She knows what to do when that happens, so there will be no cone of shame for her, either.

20160429_215857

Shoes like this are important in the Beach Ball’s story, so this picture may become a visual cue for when Anty talks about it. She is not sure about that yet. We will see.

 

As much as Anty likes playing with the Beach Ball, she is very eager to get back to Her Last First Kiss, which is going to require cracking open the old laptop, because that is the one with Scrivener on it, and Anty wants to preserve disk space on the new laptop. She is actually kind of paranoid about it, and cleans up extraneous files daily. By “kind of,” I mean “really, really, really.” She says she may crack in her resolve here and put Scrivener back on the new laptop, because the old one takes its time doing things, and she wants to keep the ball rolling.

Either way, Anty gets itchy when she spends too much time away from that story. One of the most important things she has learned on this long and winding road back to the active writing life, is that, the longer she is away from a project, the more challenging the road back will be. There have been times when the road has been so long and convoluted that she got so hopelessly lost that she might as well have ended up on the wrong continent. Her worst-worst nightmare in the really real world is to be stuck, alone, someplace from which she cannot get back on her own. The last few years have felt like that sometimes, and she is not willing to let that happen again. So, this time, she’s going to take steps to make sure that does not happen. Some of those steps, she is figuring out as she goes. This may be one of them.

I have faith in her, though, because I know a secret. Okay, it is not really a secret. Autumn is coming. That is the time of year when Anty gets her super powers back. As you may be able to tell in my picture, there is a floof on my neck. “Floof” is our family’s word for the bunches of fur I shed at one time. I always start around my neck, and when I start making neck floofs, that means I am going for the Big Shed. This time of year, it will mean shedding my sleek summer coat (well, as sleek as Maine Coons get; we are pretty fluffy all year round) and growing in my nice, warm winter coat. That will make me super fluffy.

Autumn also makes Anty super happy, because it is her favorite season (but when it is winter, she will say that is her favorite season. I think they take turns) not only because I start getting fluffier, the leaves turn pretty colors and fall on the ground, and there is pumpkin flavored everything (Anty loves pumpkin flavored everything) but because that is usually when Anty hits her stride and becomes more productive. Earlier this week, Anty spent an entire day piecing together everything she and Anty Melva have written on the Beach Ball, to see how far along they are.

Although Anty does not like to count words when she is drafting, Anty Melva wanted to know how far they were, so she found out. She was super impressed. They have already written a bunch and are well on their way. They wrote more than Anty thought they had; a lot more, actually. Now it is her job to finish this scene and send it to Anty Melva, so that they can be even further along. She knows what her next scene, after Anty Melva’s next scene, is going to be, so she can work on that one, too.

Her next scene for Her Last First Kiss is one of her favorites so far, so she is very eager to get deeper into that and add more layers. Since the vet said that the other part of my butt is not looking explodable, I think it is safe to say I am not putting any obstacles in the way of that scene for this coming week. which means that is pretty much it for this week. Until next week, I remain, very truly yours,

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

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

Right Now, I Am an Egg

annabowling 3 Comments

On Twitter, at least. Seriously. See? Right here.

IAMANEGG

I am visible, I promise

 

Okay, not exactly there, because that picture has the camera with the plus sign, telling me where I can put the picture (in the literal sense; there may well be a figurative meaning in there as well, for all the challenge this has posed) but putting in actual picture? Nope.

To be fair, I liked the picture that was there before. It was actually the first picture of myself that I honestly liked in a long time, and that sparked some refining of my personal style, which is what sparked the desire to spiff my profile (all right, the factory reset on my laptop did have something to do with the matter as well) and I thought nothing could be easier than putting a new profile picture up, but, apparently, I was mistaken there.

At this point, I am tempted to leave the egg where it is. I am more concerned with the missing background on the page -can we even do that anymore on Twitter? If we can’t, I am sorely disgruntled over that development.- and satisfied with the header, which is my giant eyeballs, so, really, the profile picture is my only complaint here, which leaves me in a pretty good place, all things considered. Since I have been considering a lot of things lately, that is actually rather impressive.

Gmail is on a queue again, and I have no idea how that works, so the artfully composed and edited shot of my secretary desk, with my new morning pages book in action, and bonus guest “pastel” (I do not think that word means what the manufacturer thinks it means, but I love them anyway) gel highlighters, is not in my in-box, so what we get is the stripped-down shot of what is actually on my lap desk at present. Once I have a featured image at the top of my page, my brain knows it’s blog time, so I’ve learned to put anything up there and let the blabbering flow. I can always fix it (picture or blabbering) later.

Which is why I still don’t have Scrivener on my current laptop, and I don’t know that I’m going to reinstall it anytime soon. One, it’s still on the old laptop; two, Melva works in Word, which the old laptop also has, and converting documents is not either of our favorite things; 3) I like keeping this laptop lean; and 4) I freaking love composing in Word Pad, which surprises the heck out of me…and it doesn’t.

The other night, I was on Skype with H, both of us grumbly over where we were on respective projects. Facebook had decided I would like to remember the exact date an editor last confirmed to me they had received the book I’d sold them (for the record, Facebook, I did not.  I actually cried a little.) I said something along the lines of “stuff it, I’m doing it, right now.” (I did not use those exact words.)

If this were a movie, imagine  H and me, sitting, midpoint, on a dock that overlooks a scenic lake. This would be the part where I would clamber to my feet, whip my oversized white t-shirt over my head, revealing fashionable-yet-modest swimsuit beneath, race down the dock at top speed, shout, “Ronkonkoma!” (once-upon-a-time version of “cowabunga” et al, that a favorite cousin and I shared as kids) and cannonball into the water. This was not a movie, so what actually happened was that I stuck my flash drive into the UBS port…and then remembered the document was in Scrivener, and Scrivener is not yet reinstalled on this machine. Going back to the movie image, this would be where I would frantically try to un-cannonball because…well, not sure where to go with this one, because there would still be water, only not the kind of water I expected. Maybe it was cold. Maybe I’d spotted lake sharks.

In either case, impact. So what if I didn’t have that particular program? Word Pad would do, and so I opened a new document. I started swimming. I couldn’t format, couldn’t count words, couldn’t see any reminders of how far behind I was or how far I had to get to my goal. All I could do was tell the story, and that’s what I did. Much like writing longhand. It felt incredible. Since it was late, and I was tired, I paddled on back to the dock before too long, but with a sense that I’d discovered something I’d been missing (and no, FB, I don’t want a reminder of how long. Really, really don’t.) and that my muscles, though complaining, were stronger for the stretch.

Word Pad was something I’d written in, years and lifetimes ago, when I wrote paper letters to a once-upon-a-time friend when it was too hot to sleep, at a desk with stacks of historical romance novels piled on the floor behind me, because I didn’t have bookshelves in that room. Scrivener will definitely go on the new desktop, when that computer joins the family, and I am very glad to still have it on the old laptop, but, right now, I am writing these books. I am telling these stories, and the purity of throwing the story at the screen and seeing what sticks is motivating me like crazy. I refuse to let go of that, ever again.

I don’t have all the answers right now, and I’m not going to pretend I do. Rather, I’m finding them out as I go, and, this time, I am appreciating the journey. What works for me, now? What stories do I want to tell, now? What tasks can I realistically accomplish, today? Do those. I don’t have a fabulous new book deal to splash on the screen, but I am writing one and a half (Melva has the other half) books that I absolutely love, with people who are so real to me that I see things in stores and think, “Hero would love that; I should get him one,” before I remember they are fictional. I have articles in the hopper, more on the horizon, and forward we go.

Ronkonkoma!

:splash:

 

 

Things That Almost Work

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Right now, I have a lot of things that almost work. A quick rundown:

  • Old laptop has stripped-down version of Sims 3, Word, Scrivener and Scapple, but loses internet connection quickly, and when it has it, it’s spotty. Also, there is no H key, and the only place I can put the external keyboard is on top of the built-in keyboard, which has some interesting results when one keyboard moves on top of another one. Hint: it is not the good kind of interesting.
  • Printer that works with new laptop says it has a paper jam, even when there is no paper in it, and I can’t see anything blocking anything.
  • Two fountain pens have full cartridges (one had a converter that is almost as old as I am, and finally gave up the ghost, so will no longer draw ink, hence use of cartridge) but said cartridges will not dispense ink, even though I have pierced the ends, and they do bleed ink, if I take them out of the pens, but that is not very useful.
  • Old desktop has Word, and Photoshop Elements, but the speakers are shot, it won’t recognize the internet at all, and, while it has a stripped down version of Sims 2, the CD ROM drive, which is needed for the disk to run the darned thing, keeps shooting out and trying to kill me (it has drawn blood, I am not kidding) while ejecting any disk I attempt to give it.
  • Our apartment has lovely, high, prewar ceilings, which I love, except when it comes time to change lightbulbs, which all but the bathroom and bathroom hallway need, and I can’t…quite…reach, and of course we can rent a ladder, but getting it to the house, in a small car, presents more challenges than comedic opportunities.
  • No matter what I do, my Twitter userpic is showing as a blank white square, even though I have tried different images, double, triple and quadruple checked the file size, deleted the old picture (which I am now regretting) and tried to start from scratch. Header worked fine on the first try, though, and I have no idea what happened to the backgrounds -plain white bothers me- and there is no design tab, which is what all the tutorials I find online tell me to look for. Is this just me?
  • We will not discuss the flip flop situation (also, I have always hated that name; my family called them zoris while I was growing up, and they still are that, to me) that has had the right sandal for two pairs die in one week, and the right one about to die, in the same place, on a third pair, after the Old Navy one-pair-for-a-dollar sale, because I cannot see the future, people.

I cannot count my current laptop as one of those almost-working things, because it is working, thanks to Real Life Romance Hero helping me with the factory reset, but I still need to decide what programs to put back into the thing and which I can leave to other devices.  Skype, I put back in right away, because I am me, and I am vacillating on Spotify. Sure, I could use my phone for music, but that means some juggling around of devices, and having everything in one place is convenient. Netflix is on my phone, and I plan on downloading to my tablet, as soon as tablet will cooperate (need to adjust screen sensitivity on that, which may also fit into the above list.)

Using Word Pad is actually rather freeing, which surprised me. There is no word count option, so that’s taken entirely away, and all I could do, yesterday, when transcribing from my pretty legal pad, was exactly that. Move the story points from paper to screen, slap an asterisk in front of every paragraph, because there’s not even an option to format a bullet point list, and off I go. No chance of checking to see where I was on word count, for either the scene or the book (and, at this point, doing so is a surefire motivation killer) but exactly the right place for my brain to make connections, spot details that needed adding, move things around, know how to do the things I didn’t before, etc. Not what I  had expected, but, maybe, what I needed.

I transcribed five handwritten legal pad pages into one file, named it, saved it, and went home, satisfied. Right now, I am telling the story, and I am telling it my way. There is plenty of time, once I get to The End, to smooth things out, make it pretty and ensure it is the right length for its intended markets. Her Last First Kiss is not going to be one of those books that almost worked. I’ve had too many of those. I do not want to count my miscarried manuscripts, but there are a number of them, and each one took a piece of me with them when we parted. This time, I need to keep the blinders on and keep moving forward, in the way that is right for me. The bells and whistles, all the “shoulds” and “everybody else does x-es” don’t matter. They need to take their place in the closet with the Hypercritical Gremlins and be quiet there.

My needs are my needs. They are not bad or wrong, only different. Your mileage may -and likely does- vary. The only thing I absolutely need to have is what gets me from Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After, and those things that almost work? Why are they still here?

 

So It Begins…Again

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Technically, this is Monday’s post. I actually tried writing Monday’s post on Monday, but a twisted ankle (better now) and my one year old (almost to the day) laptop’s crisis, resulting in the nuclear option of a factory reset, took up the first two days of the week, an so I’m now doing Monday’s post on Wednesday. I don’t mind, because A) now I have something to talk about, and B) the post I had was a stinker anyway. I am not exaggerating. It bored even me.

I should probably mention that, as technology un-inclined as I am, I am also very attached to this particular laptop, and the thought of having to go back to the old one, even as an interim measure, did not sit at all well. Real Life Romance Hero stepped in and pulled the trigger on the whole reset deal, while I washed my hair (clean hair is always a mood booster) and read the latest (that I have) issue of The Walking Dead. The fact that The Walking Dead is my comfort read probably says something, but that’s another story.

We will skip to the part where RLRH informs me that the reset went smoothly and now I needed to put in the annoying personal information. That done, it was time to look at what I had. Short detour to install Windows 10, gasp in horror, and hit the button to return to Windows 8.1, because I am not that much of a masochist. All the while, I Skyped with a writer friend on my phone, because I have to talk about things like this, and finally left things for the night, knowing I would need to face the big question today: what programs do I really need to have physically installed on my laptop?

Skype: I put Skype on my phone pretty much the second I had to take it off my laptop, because Skype is an extrovert’s lifeblood. The whole internet, really, but Melva and I can plot insanely fast when actually face to face, and, since we live 200-ish miles apart at present, Skype is the way to go. It’s also how I communicate with H and Critique Partner Vicki, so not-Skyping is not an option, but, again, how much space is it going to take up and/or leave me?

Spotify: My tunes. I have a playlist for each project (save the Beach Ball, but that gets my Go To Work playlist, so it’s kind of covered) and am either listening to the appropriate playlist at most times, or browse for whatever suits my needs at the moment. I also have Spotify on my phone and tablet, so it’s not strictly necessary to have it on my laptop, though it is super convenient to have everything on one device.

Scrivener: I have Scrivener installed on my old, has-a-complicated-relationship-with-the-internet-and-uses-an-external-keyboard-plus-the-screen-always-wants-to-recline laptop, which also has Word. I’ve been almost exclusively working in Scrivener for Her Last First Kiss, and mostly in it for the Beach Ball, but I really don’t need all the bells and whistles when I’m writing the bullet point draft (smooths out into my first draft; I’ll explain later) and can do quite fine in WordPad or GoogleDocs, or Word on my old desktop (so old that the CD drive tries to kill me and it refuses to recognize the Internet.) I can move current work to Word or GoogleDocs, continue from there, then plop it all back into Scrivener (if I want to) when I’m done and/or the new desktop joins the family.

Scapple: I love Scapple, and I would love to use it more. Like Scrivener, I also have it on the old laptop, so it doesn’t technically need to be on this laptop, and, like Scrivener, a bit jumping through hoops-y to reinstall, even though I have all the information. So, I have them both, only not on this device, and I do like all that nice open space in my hard drive. Like so:

SCREENSHOT

So good not to be in the red…

See the nice blue bar that tells me how much space I have? As in, it’s not red and all the way up to the end of its space? That’s so unusual to me that I don’t want to lose it, but, at the same time, gal’s got to get some work done, or all future blogs will be full of whining (much like this) and not the fun stuff like finishing books and submissions and releases and all the rest. So, I’m considering, and I may end up winging the whole issue, putting in what I need to put in, when I need it, searching for ways to work around it, and, maybe, finding the way I do this best, now, rather than the ways I “should” or have always done.

Right now, I’m writing some stories. Head down, eyes on my own paper, keep banging on (Thank you, Idris Elba) and, before I know it, I’ll be typing “The End,” only it won’t be. There are other stories, other times and places to visit, other heroes and heroines whose stories need to be told, other tales to tell and other computers to drive me insane in the telling of them. Other pens, too, and notebooks, wherein emptying the one means filling the other, and all the adventures my imaginary friends and I will have along the way. Right now, I am writing these books, telling these stories, and that’s where I need to put my time and attention. Right now, I am posting this, then taking my act on the road, to our local coffee house, so I can transcribe the latest scene. It’s going into WordPad for now, because I’d much rather write than fiddle with programs.

Typing With Wet Claws: Too Darned Hot Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Even though I am the one with the built-in fur coat, Anty  is the one most affected by the heat. Uncle had a rough day, too, yesterday, and even Mama has been feeling sluggish, and she is usually the hardiest in this weather. Before I am allowed to talk about anything else, I have to talk about Anty’s writing first, so we will do that now.

Anty’s most recent Buried Under Romance post is here, and it looks like this:

BUR

Do you like to go fast or slow?

Summertime has never been Anty’s favorite time of year, because it is very hot and bright, and she is sensitive to both of those things. That means that, for most of the summertime, staying inside, in front of the box fan, during the day is the smart thing to do. Thankfully, since Anty is a writer, this actually works in her favor. Well, apart from the whole lack of energy thing. Do not worry, though; when autumn comes, Anty will get her superpowers back. She is not willing to wait for a couple more months to get to the top of her game, and so she has to make a couple of adjustments here.

Since Anty is a morning person, getting up super early helps. It is still cool in the morning, and  her brain is all fresh from sleep. The house is quiet, too, so it is the perfect time for her to write her morning pages. She is excited to start a new morning pages book, and has settled on the Papaya! Art spiral bound book for her next round of morning pages. If you have missed that post, (it is here) that book looks like this:

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She still does not know what pens she will use for that, but that is okay. She will know what to use when the time comes, and admits that she will probably have to do an ink test, even though she doesn’t want to make any mistakes on a book this special. Come to think of it, she feels the same way about the books she is writing, but there, too, she is learning to make adjustments.

Miss H, one of Anty’s writer friends, reminds Anty that nobody ever has to see a scene if Anty really thinks it is, um…stuff, (Miss H did not say “stuff.” I am using it as a euphemism for what she really said.) but Anty does have to write it. Anty is very tempted to say bad words to Miss H when Miss H says this, but she settles for saying the same thing right back to Miss H when it is Miss H’s turn. That is the important thing. It is okay to write the scene while scared of writing that scene. Getting even the roughest version out of the brain and onto the page or screen is what is important here. There will be time to make it pretty later, but nothing can be done if there is nothing on the page. Anty finds that it can be difficult to get over perfectionism, but it is also necessary. Sometimes, that is the biggest part of the battle, and once there is something, anything, on the page, then the rest comes easily.

This week, Anty has been working on both Her Last First Kiss, and the Beach Ball, although not as quickly as she might like. As I mentioned above, it has been very hot, and there has been a lot of humidity. I usually find a doorway with good air flow (the bathroom hallway is the best, because there are no windows, the floor is linoleum (or would that be lion-oleum, because it is comfy for kitties?) and, if I am in the right spot, I can catch breezes from the living room fan, Anty and Uncle’s bedroom fan, and stay in direct line of sight of the pantry door, which is where the humans keep my food and treats.

Even though Anty is most dominant, she is too big to flop in a doorway, and so she has to take other measures. Her comfy chair is in front of the living room fan, and the master bedroom door can close, keeping all the cool air inside. Her office even  has a ceiling fan, so that gives her another place she can work comfortably, even when it is not a good idea for her to go outside even the short distance to the coffee house. Even so, there are some days when it is flat out (and I am flat, even though I am inside) too disgusting to brain.

Anty is learning that, when it is difficult to put out, then it is time to take in. Because her body loses water, salt and potassium when the weather is hot, then she needs to put those things back into it by what she eats and drinks. The same way, since she puts out story when she writes, she needs to take story in between writing sessions. Reading is the best way, in her genre and out of it, to both stay grounded in why she loves what she loves and to inject some new energy into what she’s already doing.

 

Sometimes, the shift happens when Anty is not even looking for it. Today, while doing laundry (she went very early, so she could be there and back before it got too hot) Anty read a chunk of one of the books she got from the library earlier this week, and, when it came time to read the next chapter, she took out her mini notebook from her pen pouch to make a couple of quick notes. Yeah, Anty, those pages are more than a couple of notes, but that is exactly the point. Keeping one’s well filled means there will be enough to draw from when the time comes.

Anty says that time has come now  (also for my lunch, so there’s that) so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

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Until next week…

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling

 

 

 

 

Morning Pages, the Heir Presumptive, and the Young Pretender

annabowling 1 Comment

 

 

With one week left in my current, much-beloved morning pages book, the time has come to decide on which book will be its successor, and I’d like to say I’m closer, but a young pretender has entered the fray.  Going by only what I currently possess, the heir presumptive is this lovely bird and flower themed Punch Studio book:

Endpapers
Lined pages

 

That’s the endpapers in the first picture, internal pages in the second. Same images on all spreads, where I do prefer that they rotate. Banastre Lobster has no opinion on that.

Normally, the issue would be settled, but we have a young pretender to the throne, this spiral-bound Papaya! Art (the exclamation point is part of the name) gorgeousness, which would continue the Paris theme:

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Banastre must, of course, investigate.

My heart did a skippity-skip when I first saw this on the shelves at Barnes and Noble, and I don’t remember when the precious actually came home, but I knew I wanted to save it for something special. Since I still have absolutely zero ideas for any Parisian historical romances, morning pages would fit the bill. Inside pages are not lined, but are lovely.

First, we have this inside cover and first page, which presents a challenge when the discipline is one two-page spread for each day:

 

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Name and address on inside cover, obv, but facing page?

 

After that, we have these:

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two
three
four

 

None of the pages are lined, but those backgrounds…guh. Gorgeous. I want to put things on them. On the one hand, I think Hero would heartily approve of my appreciation of a pre-prepared background, because he used to do that kind of thing, but then again, his experience in Paris (hey, there is a connection!) was not exactly his favorite part of life. He wouldn’t know about the Eiffel Tower, though, as it was a century after his time. The clouds, though, and the design elements, those he knows, and the floral motifs fit nicely for a Georgian gentleman (and his lady.)

The question for me  here is, would the lack of lines be a problem? Also, what sort of pens do I want to use on these pages? They’re thicker than regular paper-paper, but not thick enough that I’d feel comfortable using Sharpies, at least not without an ink test, but I don’t want to sacrifice a page for that. Even so, the rotating designs excite me, and since I plan to increase to seven entries per week instead of six, that’s almost two rotations every week, but not exactly, so monotony would not be an issue. If the pages are visually inspiring, I am going to come to them with a better outlook, and, if stuck for what to put on the page, the images have suggestions right there. If I really need lines, I can draw them on with pencil and ruler. Fountain pens or rollerballs are my best educated guess on the pen issue. I’ve tried another book by this same maker, a different design in this line, with ballpoint, and I was so unhappy with that, that I set the book aside. Will need to resurrect that one, with a better selection of pen.

As I am writing this, I am listening to the Hamilton soundtrack. A writer friend will be traveling from Canada to NYC to see the show live this coming week. Right after the original cast departs, which does bring a pang, but, then again, there will be the energy of of the new cast making their debuts, and there will be the PBS documentary in October, and the original cast has been filmed, (I would totally go see this in theaters, if it were to be distributed that way) so it’s possible to get the best of both worlds there. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack, first as an Independence Day celebration (I know, Banastre, I know. Mama still loves you.) and then as part of my “immerse myself in the zeitgeist” plan of working through this draft.

Her Last First Kiss is set in England, in 1784, and Hero is not a soldier; he’s an artist, and he’s spent the pertinent years on the Continent (see Paris experience, above) so he’s pretty far removed from that business in the Colonies, but he does exchange letters with a cousin, relocated to Canada from New York, because expulsion of British and all that. Heroine is the product of a Russian father and English mother, was raised in England and identifies as British. These two have latched onto me in a way I’d been afraid I wouldn’t experience again after the time travel stalled, and I want to give them the very best story I can, which means I need to let their world seep into my writerblood.

The thing with writing historical romance novels is that the characters don’t know they’re in a historical. They think they’re in a contemporary. For Hero and Heroine, 1784 is their now. They aren’t wearing costumes; those are their clothes. People are people, no matter what century in which they do their people-ing, and that’s what I want to bring to live the most. If Hero were a 21st century person, he’d probably be glued to his phone, but he’s an 18th century person, so he carries around a portable lap desk so he can write letters and sketch/doodle. That was actually the first thing he showed me about himself, that desk. Writers, you understand how that works. Once he saw I was going to treat the desk right, then he came a little bit closer, like a stray cat when their benefactor moves the food dish an inch closer to the porch every day, until both cat and human are astonished that they are cuddling in the porch swing together.

If I were going to let Hero pick the new daily pages book, he’d pick the spiral bound. Which is, obviously, a lot thinner than the heir presumptive. Which may lead me to the same dilemma sooner, rather than later. I am not complaining.

 

There Are Lobsters on My Desk

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In case there is any doubt as to my lifelong case of raging Anglophilia, today’s picture should put that to rest. Paris-themed stationery aside (as in literally; I had to move my Marie Antoinette themed matchbook notepad out of the way to take this image) I’ve been hardwired for most things British straight out of the box, as far as I can remember. Don’t ask me when it began, because I have no idea, though I will allow that, by the time I was one year old, the family newly moved to a house in Bedford, NY, from Manhattan, our bottom-of-the-hill neighbors were Scottish immigrants. Shortly after that, my mom met her best local friend, a British  expat, who happened to have a baby my age (yes, our families met on a playground, why do you ask?) Very easy to guess, in this case, what sort of adults I saw most often on a regular basis in my formative years. I strongly suspect they imprinted on me, early, and with lasting impact.

While that probably explains my affinity for mentally hopping the pond, I lay the thankblame (which should totally be a real word) for historical romance being my soulmate genre at the feet of two aunts. Aunt L was my mom’s sister. She lived in New Jersey, and, every time she visited (we lived in CT by this time,) she would bring at least one paper grocery bag stuffed to the top with historical romance novels. I was too young to read them at this point, but it was still my job to take the bag directly to the laundry room, un-bag them, and set them aside for my mother’s later perusal. This was when I fell in love with some of the cover art in that first wave of historical romance. It was all painted back then, not photographs, every cover a tiny work of art. I read the blurbs, noted hero and heroine first names (I’ve been name-obsessed since I was about eight) and was a good kid, not looking into the forbidden pages, not even a little.

Well, kind of. Aunt S, wife to Uncle G, my dad’s best friend from their Army days, wrote one. Then two, then three, you get the drift. I went with Mom to the book section of Caldor, to peruse the rack and keep an eye out for Aunt S’s name. I don’t remember which one of us found it, but I remember how my heart did a skippity-skip when I saw it, then another when Mom took it out of the rack.  We were buying that book. We were taking it home. I have had that same feeling many a time, when lifting a much-desired book from its shelf, rack, box, hitting the download button, whatever, but this one…this one was the very first, and I knew, without knowing much about it, that this one would be special. I didn’t know it was going to change my life.

Even before Aunt S wrote her first book, even before (to my knowledge) Aunt L hauled grocery bags full of historical romance novels from NJ to CT (and it only now hits me that my mother and aunts were romance readers, and I never got to talk romance novels with them. I even remember mentioning something about a character from one of Aunt S’s books to Aunt G, another of Mom’s sisters, and her responding that she saw the character differently…you read at least one romance novel, Aunt G, and you never said.) I lived in Bedford, NY, during the Bicentennial (dating myself, I know, but I am fine with dating myself, because I always have a lovely time; I’m delightful.) As in town that was literally burned to the ground by the British Army during the war, except for one house. Home to a very lovely historical society I loved then and love now, and setting for my first historical romance, My Outcast Heart.

Dalby and Tabetha’s story takes place a  half century and change before the war, so they’d be opinionated seniors by that time, but it’s safe to say that, growing up around that much Revolutionary history, the Georgian age imprinted on me, as well. Maybe that’s why the Georgian period seems to be my historical default setting when I start a new novel. It’s not the only period I like – I’ve written sixteenth century, English Civil War, turn of the twentieth century romances so far, that are currently available, and I have hopes for my first medieval, but when it came time to start Her Last First Kiss, there wasn’t any doubt that it would be Georgian.

There aren’t any Redcoats (aka Lobsterbacks) in Hero and Heroine’s story, though they’ll likely find a few when they get where they’re going, but in future books, there absolutely will be. Ember and her Golden Man still rustle at me from the pages of notebooks and not-quite-right drafts, and I’m sure there will be other soldiers with tales to tell, so I will keep acquiring lobster-related items along with my Union Jacks and other related ephemera. For now, I’m head down, eyes on my own paper, for Hero and Heroine’s tale, which I can now get to, as I can cross “blog entry” off my list. Happy midweek!