Back in the Saddle

December 7, 2015annabowling 2 Comments

Monday again, and the first time in two weeks that I am sure enough that I will make it out of this cold alive. Semi-normal day yesterday, which left me tired but accomplished, so time to see about getting back in the creative saddle again. This is both an exciting and daunting project.

Let’s take that one at a time. First, the excitement. Not coughing, not leaking sticky goo from my eyes, and not having a throat made of sandpaper (well, most of the time. Cherry cough drops, I still love you.) are all things I highly appreciate, as well as the ability to concentrate for more than ten minutes at a time, and I have missed my daily trips into 18th century England and one very complicated romance between two unlikely lovers. I finally get to start preparing for Christmas, my very favorite holiday. Tomorrow, I get to combine a trip to the pharmacy for Real Life Romance Hero with a writing session at Panera, and, best of all, a twilight walk through the park, which is lit up for the season, and I can take pictures. Were we not between ovens, I would be churning out batches of cookies in celebration. Absence does make the heart grow fonder when it comes to writing, and I am very eager to get back to that.

Even so, there’s the daunting aspect. I’ve been away from active work on this book (okay, these books, as work on two novellas also fell by the wayside) for two weeks. Ugh. I am insanely grateful I don’t count words at this stage of the game, because I would probably give up in disgust, and the mere thought of miscarrying yet another novel is more than I want to even think about if I want to get back in the groove. It’s easy to get discouraged when friends have cover reveals and new releases and new sales and I’m staring at a blank page and wondering if I have ever met these story people before. Add to that the fact that ‘not enough layers’ and ‘clean sweep’ can apply to the same project at the same time.

On the one hand, that doesn’t seem entirely fair, and on the other, the thought of a fresh, blank document excites me. The fact that this is not the first time on the same project makes me want to punch things (I suggest keyboards in this instance) but if it’s going to make a stronger story, and a stronger writer, well, okay then. I’d tell anybody else that it seems perfectly normal and natural to have been knocked back a couple of paces by that much sick time, and that it’s not time lost.

Perspective is always a good thing. During that time, I read, and did art journal work that helped me see that, when a scene (or project) isn’t working, it’s likely one of those two things. Kind of like a sketchbook for writers. The only thing I actually sketch is boxes at the time, and even those aren’t something I want to show around, but all those layers of playing “what if” and “how about X” and saying “yes, and” to myself do sit in my mental crock pot and simmer together into something I might not have put together if I were actually looking to do so. Alchemy, that’s all I’m going to say.

That, and permission to trust myself. Still working on that one, and it’s scary. If I keep the story in my head and in my head alone, then I can’t fail. The story and the characters, and the writer herself, get to stay safe and protected. Nobody can hate them. Nobody can not “get” them. They can’t stumble and fall. They can’t grow stronger. Nobody (but me) can love them. I know these characters well enough to know that they aren’t going to stand for that. The last two, really.

So, I keep what I have, and I open a new document, set up my bullet points and blorch onto the page, as many layers as the substrate will hold. Spew it out now and make it pretty later. That’s what subsequent drafts are for, after all. Reading a friend’s ms and talking to writer friends on the internet reminded me of the joy to be found in storytelling, which is as important as the craft and discipline. It’s a balancing act. That sneaking away to scribble down the movie in my head is the first step toward a finished ms, a new sale, a cover reveal, a great review, and all of the rest. The story has to happen first. Nothing else can happen without it, and none of that can happen without me. Daunting and exciting both, that.

Typing With Wet Claws: Art Journal Therapy Edition

December 4, 2015December 4, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Typing With Wet Claws. Anty is still battling her very bad cold, but she thinks she is getting the upper hand on it, at last. I will keep you all posted.

When Anty finds it difficult to concentrate on writing but still wants to be creative, she can spend time with her art notebooks (most people say art journals.) Even when Anty finds putting words or images on the page too much for her brain, she can still put down backgrounds, which is what she spent some time doing this week.

This spread is only gesso and watercolor, but she still finds it very interesting. The page with different colors on it is leftover paint from other backgrounds brushed on top of gesso, and the page with only gray on it is gray watercolor painted over gesso into which she scratched lines into while it was still wet. I could have helped her with that. I have claws.

These pages are also backgrounds, or the starts of backgrounds. Anty does not have to know what is going to go on the page in the final version, but only concentrates on what feels right for what she is doing in the present. Sometimes, that means putting down a mask, to keep part of the page the original color while she puts other colors on top of it.

Cropping is hard when you have paws…

mask and spray ink

beneath the mask

Anty has learned that, when an art page is not working, it is due to one of two things:

Not enough layers
Clean sweep

Either Anty has not added enough things to the page for it to look right, or she needs to start over, completely fresh, with a clear idea of what her focus should be. Maybe she wants to see what kind of mark a pen or brush can make, or what she can do with a particular color of paint. As you can see in the picture above, she has ripped out a few pages in her time. Sometimes they cannot be saved, but, usually, they can, by turning into something else.

Any really really loves a calendar she had a few years back, from PaPaYa! Art, so she wanted to use it as an altered book and add in her own art. One of the first things she thought she would do would be put a coat of gesso over the calendar pages, to make a new background. That was a good idea. What was not a good idea was to do all of them at once, and “protect” the wet pages by putting scrap paper in between them.

Well. She knows, now, that she needs to use wax paper when she does that. Back then, she did not know. To make matters worse, the pages she used were very very very bright blue. They had things printed on them, and she thought it might be interesting, once she figured out that the pages were now adhered to the calendar pages, to see if she could treat it like a gel medium resist and gently rub away the blue paper, leaving the words, and incorporate that in the art. That was not what happened.

What happened was that the warm water that dissolved the blue paper also dissolved part of the page beneath it. Some pages had to be torn out altogether, but, since they were already total losses, then she could use them to experiment with other techniques. Which often turns into something else she really can use, like this:

The watercolor went over the parts of paper Anty could not rub off differently than it went over the parts of the page that were plain gesso, and even the part of the page that came off at the top could be interesting as a part of something else. Anty can use this page as part of a bigger page, or she can cut it down into smaller parts and use some or all of them as parts of several other pages or projects.

If you think this is where I remind Anty that this advice can carry over into writing as well, you are right. If a scene is not working out, either there are not enough layers, or it is time for a clean sweep. Go back to the idea at the heart of the scene and start over, with the heart of the idea in mind. Usually, one of those two things will do the trick, and she can fill the page with whatever it needs, then move on to the next.

My nursing duties call, so that is going to be about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Until next week…

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

In My Blanket Fort, Coloring Furiously

November 30, 2015annabowling 2 Comments

Well, it’s Monday. Time for Monday’s post. Not sure what I’m going to write here, because even I am sick of reading me write about being sick. Not sure what else there is to say on that front, except that the cold seems to like it here, and I am impressed with the sheer volume of mucus my body can produce. I do not want to know where it is all coming from, but at least that’s progress?

Cherry and licorice cough drops have become a food group for me, and my favorite foods at the moment are those that do not have corners. On the plus side, I sound almost human after I’ve had ice cream, and I am staying well hydrated. Ice skulls are lifesavers (I do have a roll of actual Lifesavers, but have not yet opened them.) By which I mean small novelty ice cubes in skull shaped molds I brought home around Halloween. Perfect size to pop in my mouth and cool things down without being unwieldly. Plus, they’re skulls. That has to count for something.

The way things are going, I’ll take that. It’s easy to get discouraged. Last week was going to be the week I made up for the week before’s loss of writing time, and then look what happened. Look at it. Not only did I not get things done, but it feels like things I did get done, got un-done. I would like to retreat to my blanket fort and color furiously. Yes, I used an adverb. Want to make something of it?

Right now, I’m grumpy. I’m tired of being sick, tired of being tired, tired of not Getting Things Done. Tired of not having brain enough to get a lot of reading , much less writing, done, but one thing I’ve been able to keep focus on for the last couple of days is art. In my office, on the floor, with paper and pencils and paint and assorted ephemera, it’s a different brain space than trying to make English work in a brain that only wants to take a nap (but knows that it can’t, because getting horizontal seems to be my body’s version of putting in a request for a long coughing fit that leaves me even more exhausted.)

This spread took me a couple of days to create, no plan in mind but to use stuff I could get without having to look for it. So, liquid acrylic paints, gesso, an almost-dried-out paint dabber, fortune cookie fortunes, and gel medium.

The page with the blue background was the page I gave some form of thought to, mainly to finally use the fortunes I’d been saving. Get those down on the page, arrange in pleasing manner, then paint around them with the blue paint. The arrangement of the fortunes suggested boxes, and primary colors seemed to fit, so yellow boxes came next, then the dark red boxes, and I may do some doodling with silver Sharpie or white gel pen, but I’d need to pick up a new one of those, as the old one now pines for the fjords, despite my best efforts.

I’d always planned on using the fortunes “someday.” These particular paints are free samples of some of the good stuff, from the art store, again, saved for “someday.” The day I’m good enough. The day I somehow intuitively know how to paint like Elaine Duillo by sheer osmosis. The day life calms down. The day, well, there’s always something, isn’t there? That day (don’t ask me when, they all blend) I decided, enough. It’s that day. Put the fortunes on the page. Paint around them. What’s next? What’s after that? Well, that, apparently. Who knew?

The facing page was somewhat of a cheat; random smushing and/or swiping of stuff, mainly to clean my brushes, and, in the case of the black dots, to see if the paint dabber was still worth saving. It kind of is. Not what it used to be, but not too far gone, either. I can deal with that. I have no idea how my phone camera got rotated, but as I took the picture in the middle of a coughing fit, that may have something to do with how that turned out. I’m going to call it good enough, and/or a new perspective.

Are either of these pages done? Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell. What I do know is that playing with arty things like this calms me down and lets the story part of my brain free-float and work things out, away from the hypercritical gremlins that like to look over my shoulder when I’m pounding keys. (Gremlins aren’t quite as vigilant when writing longhand, thankfully, but they come back when it’s time to transcribe.) Sometimes, I have music on in the background, or a movie or TV episode on the DVD player. Sometimes, it’s quiet, with only the voices in my head.

Sometimes, I have a plan for these pages, and sometimes, I don’t. Sometimes, the best pages come from when I think I’m only cleaning my brush or playing “what marks does this make?” or “what color is this, really?” Some mindless noodling with color and line and shape, and before I know it…art. It can be the same with writing. Was once, before I let the rules drill in too deeply, and it’s a place I am learning to find again. There are going to be some messy pages along the way, some that get torn out and we will never mention again. Others, though, others come together in such a way that it feels more like discovery than creation. I’ll take that, too.

RIP, Mini Mouse

November 18, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

Real Life Romance Hero has long suspected that I may be emitting some sort of electromagnetic vibration that causes electronics to go berserk. Longtime writer friends have (mostly) joked for years about how I need a tech manual for anything more complicated than a butter churn. On days like this, I am inclined to believe them. While Mickey’s girlfriend (wife?) is perfectly safe (as far as I know) the device I use to point and click is now kaput. At this stage of the game, I’m not surprised.

Yesterday, I followed my favorite bits of writing advice from K.A. Mitchell: 1) change your seat and 2) open the file. Changing my seat was easy. I had to return a DVD, and there’s a quiet place to work, with internet access, and I’d be surrounded by books. Library it was. Open file and jump in anywhere. Which is exactly where the challenge presented itself. Long story short, my laptop refused to recognize my mini mouse. Once is a fluke, twice a coincidence, three times a pattern. Six or more mean this is probably a fact that I need to accept.

No big deal. I can use the touchpad built into the laptop. Good in theory, bad in practice (or my lack of same?) when it comes to Scrivener. So, new mini mouse must be obtained. Minor annoyance, and, in the best outcome, I can find a pink mouse. I’m not sure how my bent for pink electronics got started, but, at this point, I’m steering into the skid. It all fits into the pattern of doing what comes most naturally.

Technology and I are probably not ever going to be best friends. Never mind that I am currently in the market for a refurbished desktop, which means I need to actually write down things like how much memory it’s going to take to support Sims 3 or Sims 4 (in an ideal world, both, in the worst case scenario, Sims 2; I am seriously feeling the lack of Sims in my life. I have Sims Free Play on my tablet, which is fun, but not remotely the same.) and figure out if I can de-authorize Scrivener from the old laptop so that I’ll be able to have it on the new desktop whenever it joins the family. Real Life Romance Hero still marvels that I don’t keep my phone turned on all the time, but only when I want to use it, and have used it for exactly one phone call in all the time I’ve had it.

The laptop, however, that I’ve been using a lot. The letter E is but shadow of its former self, as is the N. About an hour of my morning went to convincing my laptop it did indeed have a boot system, despite its insistence that it did not, and a reminder that I needed to clear some memory was not helped by the multiple “not responding” messages when I tried to delete files from my downloads folder.

Most of those consisted of blog pictures, which can go away once the blog is posted, and copies of friends’ ms to critique, and my own chapters sent to them. All of this means I’m making progress. I’m showing up. I’m doing the work. Open the file. Put something there that wasn’t there before. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to be written. Even on, or maybe especially on the days where I tend to overthink everything.

This has been the tipping point for several manuscripts, overthought into a gelatinous mess where I lose all sight of what my original intention was. This time, I am calling in reinforcements. Critique Partner Vicki reminded me that this is one draft. My first draft. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It can’t be perfect. It can only be what it is. All I have to do is write this scene. That’s it. If I need to know something, stop, look it up, figure it out, move on along. Fix whatever it is on the next pass. If the mini mouse dies, muddle through with the touchpad, WordPad, or legal pad until new mouse may be obtained. Look at challenges as detours rather than roadblocks. The journey continues.

Paris Papers and Random Writerly Ramblings

November 16, 2015November 16, 2015annabowling 2 Comments

The image above is not all of my Paris-themed stationery, but it was what I could readily reach, fueled by only part of my first cup of tea for the day and the knowledge that getting this post written was one thing I knew I could get off my to-do list. When I put them away after the picture, I realized I had a lot more than I thought I did. This may be about half, which makes me want to rearrange my unused notebook storage to make Paris-themed books its own category. This may be about half.

That surprises me. I haven’t written anything set in Paris, apart from maybe some long-ago fanfiction (and here I will get language nerdy; no, I do not write about location X or Y. I write historical romance that may be set in location X or Y, but I’ll leave the writing about the location to others, because nobody wants to read what I would turn out on that front.) so I’m not sure why I gravitate toward this theme so much in stationery matters, but as, we can see above, I do. As one of the aspects of my From Fan Fiction to Fantastic Fiction (new version, Play in Your Own Sandbox, Keep All The Toys) workshop is to examine why we like what we like, this may be something for me to try here.

Basically, stick the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe on a piece of stationery, and I want it. Fleur de lis also work, maps, French text (I don’t speak or read French, but I can figure some out if I’m not hurried) the streets of the city, the Seine, the general vibe of the place. Do not ask me to describe that (see above) because it’s something I’m not sure how to put into words. Interesting challenge for a writer, but there it is. I’m not as much about the facts and political histories of a setting, but the zeitgeist instead, the spirit of the times.

My best-best method of research is being there. Barring time travel, living history museums or reenactments are the closest I can get. I will never forget the reenactment of a pre-Revolutionary War British army regiment, held on the grounds of the John Jay house, some years back. Growing up in Westchester County, NY, the American Revolution was all around me (okay, the French were on the side of the rebels, so maybe I got some exposure to the French through that?) especially in the year of the Bicentennial, and it never left. So, when the date of a reenactment, at a venue that had been one of my big treats as a child, coincided with my birthday (or very close to, IIRC) Housemate decided that would be the perfect gift.

It absolutely was. I made a tour of the merchants’ booths, talked to re-enactors (best-best for me is when neither one of us breaks character) and wanted to show Housemate some of the grounds. There we were, meandering the dirt path, a sea of white tents to our left, a field filled with re-enactors and modern folk alike on our right, and the ground behind us trembled. A deep male voice bellowed for us to make way for the King’s men, so we jumped to the side of the path, and a river of redcoats marched past us, footbeats and hoofbeats vibrating into my very being.

That, for me, is what I want in a historical romance, whether writing or reading. I want the full immersion, not only who was on the throne or in office, but what my people would see, smell, hear, taste and feel in their daily lives. What people of however many centuries ago wanted are, at the heart, the same things we want today. My stories start, always, with the characters. Once I know who they are, then it’s time to figure out where and when they might have lived. It’s more a matter of following them around and climbing into their skins. Where do they go when they go home? If they’re late, who misses them? What does their voice sound like when they speak? These aren’t, most often, things I can dictate, but things I have to discover.

Which may, in the end, be what’s up with my collection of Paris stationery. The voices will come when they come, at the right time, and when they do, it will be the most natural thing in the world.

Writershead Revisited

November 11, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I’m old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

My favorite movie of all time is the original 1980 Brideshead Revisited. Okay, technically speaking, it’s a miniseries, as it ran on PBS and clocks in at a whopping twelve hours, but to me, it’s a movie, and so I am counting it as such.

If you’re a purist and insist on theatrical releases, my preferences are thus:

Comedy: Love Actually
Drama: Remains of the Day
Other: Saturday Night Fever
Obscure: Lords of Flatbush

People who know me in the really real world, am I forgetting anything? I have not seen the Emma Thompson theatrical version of Brideshead Revisited, nor do I plan to, because I do not mess with perfection. Sorry, Emma, not even for you. I’ve read the novel by Evelyn Waugh (Hevelyn, for those in doubt about which Evelyn wrote this one) and will correct any who try to call the building known by non-devotees as “Castle Howard.” They are wrong. It’s Brideshead. I know. I’ve lived there, with Charles and Sebastian and Julia, and I have deep emotional scars from the first time I saw the graffiti on Charles’s mural and the empty :sorry, I need a minute: fountain :sniffle: with barbed :I can’t, I seriously can’t: wire. Sebastian drove that car around the bend of the road on that first school break, and BAM, I, as well as Charles fell deeply, irrevocably in love.

It’s the same feeling I had when I stole the then-new copy of The Kadin by Bertrice Small from my mother’s night table and read it under the bed in the guest bedroom during a power outage. I knew then and there that I’d found what I wanted to read and write for the rest of my life. The same way a lot of my SF/F reading/writing friends fell hard for Star Trek, Ray Bradbury and others, that’s how I fell for historical romance, and that’s what’s been, increasingly strongly, calling me back home.

Today, I took the bulletin board off my office wall. If I haven’t been utilizing it in the three years and change I’ve had this office, that’s not where it belongs. Later, I’ll take the items off it, find them new homes, and figure out the board’s new purpose. There will be one, because I crazy love vintage office supplies. In its place, I put the Union Jack poster above, purchased at a local art store about two years ago. it’s been rolled in brown paper, waiting for “the right time.” Which would be when, exactly? When we could spring for a fancy frame? The right fancy frame? When life calms down? When (fill in the blank?) If there’s one thing loving historical romance and historical fiction has taught me, it’s to seize the moment. So, up it went, with blue tacky stuff holding it to the place where whoever painted the room a lovely moss green had obviously painted around the mirror that Real Life Romance Hero took down for me the day we moved in. Much as I like to work on my selfie game, I don’t want to stare at myself the whole time I’m writing.

Taken in a different room, but it would be pretty much this.

I also unearthed a pub sign that I honestly don’t remember when I acquired it, and had been waiting for, you guessed it, the right time and perfect place to put it up. Maybe the right kind of hook, whatever, whatever. Baloney. I still has blue sticky stuff, so I slapped some on the back and then affixed the sign to the door. My office may technically now be the King’s Head Pub, and I am fine with that. We even have a pub cat instead of a pub dog, and I am fine with that, too. The two Georgian era prints I kept from my dad’s house and had wanted since I was a wee little princess, do need to wait for command hooks to come home before they can go on the office wall, but when they do, up they go. The right time is now.

This means I’m allowed to have pub food at home, right?

Doing things like this gets me excited, makes me want to dive headlong into the story world, climb inside the characters’ skins and see through their eyes. Writing longhand with a fountain pen, at least initial notes, is another way I find I can connect. Today, I also added another notebook to my shelf of the usual suspects on top of my desk’s hutch. It’s one of those story ideas I’ve been on and off with for years, and, as the flip side of the bulletin when story ideas and characters and settings and such have been in my head for long enough that they are old enough to vote, drink, marry or join the military without parental approval, they probably aren’t leaving, period. Better for me to get their rooms ready. That feels right.

Today, I met my Ravenwood editing goal a lot earlier in the day (for the day, not the whole project) because I wasn’t focused on word count or verb tense, but telling the story and living in that story’s world. This afternoon, I jump to Georgian England and Her Last First Kiss, and I’m excited about that, too. I don’t consider myself old, ugly or miserable, but dusting off things I love and displaying them proudly in the now, that’s a piece of the puzzle sliding into place. The road to The End, on both of these current projects, and others, has never seemed clearer.

Course Corrections

November 9, 2015November 9, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

This is one of those posts I started several times, erased, started over, thought about, thought about skipping, realized I was out of writing quotes I had not used yet, muttered bad words, etc. I ingested candy corn, which I have recently discovered I do not hate, learned the hard way that the maker of said candy corn does matter (live and learn, right?) checked on under-the-weather-family member, almost tripped over Skye, almost tripped over Skye, almost tripped over Skye (cat people, you know how that goes) and finally came to the conclusion that this is One of Those Days.

We all have them. In my case, day could have gone on Schedule A or Schedule B, but life happened, and we ended up going on Schedule C, which meant no schedule, because nobody had counted on Schedule C, and I Hate Days With No Schedule. Hate, hate, double hate. Seriously bothers me to the point of irritability. Can I get a ballpark figure on when anybody wants lunch at least? Desired menu items? Give me something, people? No, nothing? Oookay. This is why I have an office (which does not, contrary to popular belief translate to “storage area.” We’re working on that.)

I work on a daily to-do list, which makes time a lot easier to manage. Days like this require course correction. Grousing about how things are not going the way I wanted them to go only takes me so far. It does not get the current ms written or the completed one edited, nor does it write blog entries. If there is one writing related thing on my list that I can control today, it is getting this blog entry written and posted. Sometimes, life is going to get chaotic, and the only sane thing to do is to call a time out. For me, that means getting away from the chaos and retreating behind office door. One of these days, I am going to have to make a new Writing Cave sign. Even on days when I’m not able to get to the keyboard, I can write in my longhand notebooks, both all purpose and for each project. Staying in touch with the stories that way and the discipline of putting pen to paper helps a lot on days like this.

Creativity starts, for me, with showing up. Butt in chair, pen on paper, and, as a former writing group facilitator often said, the process begets the product. In short, get the pen on the paper, keep it moving, and content will come. I’ve found that almost always works. Sometimes, trusting ourselves as writers is scary business, hypercritical gremlins picking at our clothes and whispering in our ears how we’re not good enough, they’ll all know we’re only faking it, don’t quit the day job, other writers do it better, and, in fact, so well that there’s no need for us. They’re wrong, of course, but we still hear them, and it’s still a big nuisance.

The notebooks in today’s picture were all purchased or received with love, and begun with good intentions, whether attached to a particular project or as an all-purpose book. Each one of them has some to several pages, but not more than 25% (math is not my strong suit, so probably an even lower number than that) filled with…something. Either I realized I was going in the wrong direction, that book wasn’t as good a fit for its intended content as I thought it was at first glance, or I flat out wasn’t feeling it anymore. In any event, there they sat, stuffed out of the way so I wouldn’t be reminded of Yet Another Failure.

Until today. There I was, at my desk, casting about for something to photograph, and there was the tiny pink Moleskine, my attempt to satisfy my longing for its full size version (and to be a handy dandy reference for one of those back burner historicals.) This led to the spiral pink notebook (similar reason) and the red-violet with the silver heart (too cool on the inside, with blank and lined pages both) and the blue deconstructed Studio Oh! book that I started using as a catchall book for Her Last First Kiss, then set aside when I found the right one. The Papaya! Art “Fearless” (hah) book that I’d forced myself to write anything in, then abandoned because that felt forced and plain and downright disheartening…you see the pattern here. I did, too, and stared down this sampling of notebooks that didn’t (not the only ones, by any chance) and had a revelation. They weren’t ruined forever.

Nope. What are we talking here, a few pages? I love all these books. They’re pretty. Why do they have to be abandoned because I made a mistake or two in the early pages? News flash: they don’t. It’s okay to rip or cut pages out, glue them shut, staple, tape or paper clip them together if I think I might want to refer to them in the future, and start all over, fresh and brand new. I’d be thrilled if I were to receive brand new copies of these as gifts, so why not give them to myself? I can start fresh and fill them with the sort of art and writing I do now. I like that idea.

If that can be true about the physical notebooks themselves, it can also be true of the stories that go inside them. Okay, my first try at Book X didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I walked away, or it did. Maybe we decided on a mutual break, but there are still some parts, a character, an idea, a relationship, a setting, whatever, that hasn’t gone away, no matter how deeply I tried to bury it. Why not take that bit and make it into something new? What would I be losing? Nothing. What do I have to gain? Books, my friends. Big, sprawling tales of love long ago, and happily ever afters for all.

Sometimes, course corrections can take us to where we were always meant to be.

On the Fourth Day of Na-Not

November 4, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

Improving isn’t only about fixing our weaknesses. It’s also about learning to play to our strengths.

–Bryn Donovan

Catchy title mostly because I needed something to put in the space for a title, and picture (uncropped, because I forgot) of lovely birthday loot from the lovely E. Catherine Tobler, because it is pertinent to my interests. Notebooks, pens and sticky notes are always good gifts. I haven’t put anything in the notebook yet, because I’m still in the stroking the paper stage and figuring out what wants to be on those pages.

This is going to be one of those blabbery entries, because it’s only my list, and time is ticking. I have Critique Partner Vicki’s chapter to crit, a chapter from Collaborator Melva to read and then we figure out where the next scene goes. Then there’s Ravenwood to polish, which is cooperating rather well, if I do say so myself. All of this can let Her Last First Kiss simmer on the back burner and sort out a few things without breaking my brain.

That’s one of the things I like best about working on multiple projects. There’s an energy I find in switching gears. When I was a kid, my mother would tell me that the more I did, the more I’d want to do. I hated when she would say that, but now, I have to admit she’s right. The more I do, the more I want to do, especially with writing. I like that. When I would force myself to try and follow the NaNo method, I hated writing. The word count goal loomed over me, and I couldn’t see the story.

I’d thought that not doing NaNo meant cutting me off from the support system that I liked about the whole thing. While attending my first NaNo event a couple years back was a fun way to meet other local writers, I have a fabulous local RWA chapter. Not only other writers, but other writers in my chosen genre. Not only for one month out of the year, but all year round. Not only that, but writer friends I’ve known long enough that our friendships could vote, get married, and join the military without parental consent. Not necessarily in that order.

I am a talker. Those who have known me for more than about five minutes know that, and when talk turns to stories, the reading, writing, viewing and analysis thereof, well, the more I do, the more I want to do there, as well. So, November, when there is writing talk seemingly everywhere, is a good month. A really good month. For someone whose brain normally sounds very much like “storystorystorystorystorystorystory” this really is the best time of year, participation in a program or not. That’s been an interesting lesson to learn. Not sure what Mom would have made of that, but still important to keep in mind. Blogging is kind of talking, blabbering through my fingers onto the keys that are rapidly losing their letters. My E and N keys are wearing way, and it may soon be time to take out the Sharpies and reinforce the markings. Or stickers. Or not bother because I know where the keys are, and, apart from the missing H key on the old laptop, they aren’t going anywhere.

Anyway. Talking. That’s part of what I do, part of the process. For many extroverts, talking and thinking happen at the same time, and I’ve found that to be true in a lot of my experiences. There is an infamous fifty page letter in my storied (pun intended) past. I am not entirely sure, now that I’ve accepted my love for snail mail as part of my natural order, that it will always hold the title for longest non-manuscript document I have ever sent. I have no regrets. I love that I’m excited about writing, my own and those of others. I’m excited to sit at the keyboard, steal away moments to scrawl in various notebooks in a rainbow of colors, let it be crazy and messy and off the leash. There’s plenty of time to smooth it all out later. For now, letting the story spill out is all that matters, because nothing else can be done before that.

Now it’s November…

November 3, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

I’d meant to get this up yesterday, but life intervened, turning the day to family things, but that fits with what I meant to write anyway, so I am going to consider that a point of illustration. Anyway, it’s November now, and I am not Na-No-ing. Old news, and for those wishing I’d shut up about that already, I will, in a bit. Which is to say, probably December, because there’s no denying NaNo is everywhere. I’ve done it, I’ve won it, I’ve lost it, I’ve gone a few rounds with it, lost a few books to it, and have some interesting scars to show for the battle, but, in the end, there is one thing that NaNo gave me that I will always treasure. It gave me the knowledge that I am enough; the way I work is enough. I don’t need to conform to somebody else’s process or beat myself up for not doing so. As a writer, this is what I do every day (the writing, not the beating up, though that, too, some days. A lot of days. Working on that.) so a special month dedicated to it? Good for some, but I’m working on some things over here, so not for me at present.

This week, I’m looking at three things. First is Her Last First Kiss, which is hopping around between bullet points and research topics as the puzzle pieces come together. This is what I do, dive headfirst into the primordial ooze of a story and splash around until order forms, and then have a blast organizing the whole deal. It’s going to be rough, it’s going to give me fits, but, in the end, I can do what I do, and there will be a rough draft. Then I get to smooth is out and make it pretty. I can do this. I have done this. I am doing this now and will do this again with the next book and the next book and the next, repeat until dead.

Second is the novella with Collaborator Melva. This is our beach ball that we are passing back and forth, no pressure, just fun. We each get to play to our own strengths in this one, draw from each other’s, and stretch enough to make it a reachable challenge.

Third is my postapocalyptic medieval, Ravenwood, which may get retitled (and probably billed as medieval, never mind that the Plague does count as an apocalypse, but probably more on that later.) A call for submission has come up, and I do have a completed ms sitting right there in my flash drive, so a good once-over and off it shall go. I won’t be devastated if John and Aline come riding back my way, but if they do find a new home, I will be thrilled.

For the first time in a long time, I feel on firm ground where writing is concerned. This has come as the result of a LOT of writing. Some good things, some bad things, more free writing notebooks than I would care to count, filled with whinges about how hard writing is and things I wish I’d done and things I wish I hadn’t done. It comes from a ton of reading: the year I devoured every Barbara Samuel (and psuedonyms) I could find; my big fat YA summer-that-stretches-into-autumn (David Levithan, may I have your book babies, please and thank you?) and my current foray into 90s historicals and one dead laptop (well, really two, counting the one RLRH inherited) and one new one and recapping TV shows. It’s working on the next incarnation of From Fan Fiction to Fantastic Fiction (coming in 2016, because this fall got crazy) and, by dint of that, taking a closer look at why I love what I love and how I can use those elements in my own work, and picking others’ brains and trusting myself and diving into piles of stationery and notebooks and picking up old habits that worked in the past but I gave up somewhere along the way because of “supposed to’s” and “should” and and and and and…well.

Fall has always been the time of year when I get my super powers back. I feel more energized with the shorter days, when the world gets tucked in for the night, nice and early. When hot chocolate and cider flow, and Thanksgiving is soon to be upon us, and there are sweaters and boot socks and colorful leaves, and a crisp snap to the air. It’s time for curling up with a good book (or ten) under an afghan, with cup of tea at hand, and, since I am me, a notebook (or ten) on the other hand, because I have to multitask even when reading. It’s November. I’m back. I got this.

Typing With Wet Claws: Scary Stories Edition

October 30, 2015annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Here I am, practicing my begging face. Are my eyes big enough? I am next to the refrigerator, so that Anty will know I want food. My food is not in the refrigerator; that is where they keep people food. My food is in the pantry, but I figured Anty was smart enough to make the connection. Today is also the day before young humans put on costumes and go begging for treats. I beg for treats every day (and I get them) so I feel sorry they only get to do it once a year.

I was not born yet when this happened, but I have an interesting Halloween story to tell about Anty. This happened back when Olivia was our family’s kitty, and Anty worked in a place called the mall. The store where Anty worked sold accessories, which was very fun for Anty. They also said that workers could wear costumes for Halloween if they wanted. Anty thought that sounded fun, but she was also very busy that year and did not have time to put a costume together.

That is not the end of the story, though. While Anty was at work, people from the mall gave her a prize for wearing an especially imaginative costume. Anty was very confused about this, because she was wearing her regular clothes. Well, regular for Anty, that is. She had on a long patchwork skirt, suede boots with zippers, a pirate shirt and a black vest. She also had a Star Trek: The Next Generation style communicator pin that she wore as regular jewelry. The mall people said that they loved Anty’s costume as a member of a Star Trek landing party in disguise. Anty figures it was very creative of them to come to that conclusion, and maybe she had subconsciously worked in that direction, so she thanked them and accepted the prize.

She also went back to sorting through the pretty toy coins the mall people gave her to hand out to trick or treaters (they could not give out eating things because of rules) because those were not toy coins at all. Anty did not know how the mall people got those coins, because those coins were from a big big party called Mardi Gras in Louisiana, and the mall was in Connecticut. What Anty did know was that some of those coins could make parents of the trick or treaters angry, because some of those coins advertised places and activities that are not okay for young humans. Places where only grownups can go, to get drinks that are only for grownups, and places where grownups can watch other grownups, um, I will say dance. I do not mean ballroom or ballet, if you catch my drift. Anty took those kinds of coins out of the basket and did not give them out.

Those are really the only two Halloween stories I know, but I know a lot about being scared. Anty likes TV shows like The Walking Dead and Sleepy Hollow. Those are only pretend scary. I will tell you what is really scary. Research is really scary, at least according to Anty. Her first book, My Outcast Heart, was set in the town where Anty was a people kitten. Her hero was a hermit and her heroine was a subsistence farmer. That meant that the expected income for that job was food. That sounds like a very good job to me. I like food.

For this book, Her Last First Kiss, Anty is not on such familiar ground. That means she has a lot of research to do. Her previous books have had what some might call outliers as main characters. That does not mean they were very good at not telling the truth. That means that they were not a part of mainstream society. The heroine of Never Too Late started out as part of society, but she left, so she falls into that category, too. Anty says I do not need to know what a mistress is, but she needs to know how one got paid and how much and how much it would cost to keep somebody in a special hospital in 1784, and what her boy story people would have studied at Oxford and how far it is from Point A to Point B..and C and D and E, and how long did it take to get a special license to get married and other things as well. I am pretty sure I heard the exact moment her brain broke yesterday. That was a very scary moment for a kitty, because Anty was the only human at home, and I still needed food. I think she is better today, but she has a big binder out and is muttering something about something about maps. She is irritated with the Romans for putting London all the way at the bottom of the country, because that does not leave her a lot of room for characters to — Anty says I should not be talking about things like that before she has them firm in her mind.

One thing Anty has learned from all the books she has started to write but did not make it all the way is that she needs to have the foundation in place, and research is part of that. When she wants to know what her people could do in that time, she can look at what people actually did in that time. Anty is writing a romance novel, not a textbook, but she also needs to know what her people’s world was like and what they could do. If she does not know what her people could do, then she gets overthinky and that scares even Uncle, so she has to find these things out.

Anty needs the computer back, so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,