arr, mateys!

October 31, 2008 2 Comments

pumpkin and pirate stuff!

The older two kids and the husband are going out dressed as pirates. The baby and I will stay at home to hand out candy (we’re a corner house really close to the main part of town and we get tons of trick-or-treaters from the “country”). The baby will be costumed as a dalmatian puppy and I will be dressed as… myself *insert screams of horror*.

In honor of the occasion, J. A. Konrath has a cautionary post up on preventing a writer’s worst nightmare. It prompted me to back up my Documents folder to our file server for the first time in–um, a long time. Go read, and do likewise.

Have yourself a happy Halloween!

Filed Under: kids at play, writing process

do you NaNo?

October 30, 2008 4 Comments

National Novel Writing Month is almost upon us. This year November had the good sense to begin on a Saturday so all the eager novelists can get off to a flying start. I, unfortunately, will not be among them. I have a soft spot for NaNoWriMo, which gave me 50K-plus words on my first (and much loved) novel, The Changeling, in 2003. Since then, I have been too busy having babies, being pregnant, or dealing with the unpredictable sleeping patterns of newborns to take another stab at it. Next year…

Paperback Writer has compiled a great list of tips and links for NaNo-ers.

Who is participating in the novel-writing madness this year?

Filed Under: motivation

making stuff up

October 25, 2008 2 Comments

One of the cool things about my protagonist Jhayni in Season of Rains is that she’s a (an?) historian. This means that I get to make up all kinds of artifacts, sub-cultures, texts, dynasties, legends and colorful anecdotes about historical characters of her world.

And oh boy, did I ever do so, with joyful abandon.

There are Malekine characters and Ameate caves. There’s the Cyrene period, the Taumad dynasty, the Hibrean culture. There are documents succinctly known as “The Saphis Text” and ones with Stupid Long Titles like An Account of the Province Scalos in the Seventh Year of the Reign of King Saleem, and the Twelfth Year of the Governor Carados: Population, Agricultural Yield, and Mining Production. Scholars accuse each other of Darianism (whatever that is), turn up their noses at Coran “scholarship” and quibble over the merits of various academic journals. Ancient vases and tapestries abound.

No, I’m not at all having fun making stuff up. Why do you ask? *grin*

SoR rev. 2 progress: 151/245 pages <– Less than a hundred pages to go!

We are entertaining this weekend (how grand that sounds!), so I will be busy cleaning house and cooking food. Dunno if I’ll make much progress but it’ll be nice to get another 20 or so pages done.

Filed Under: season of rains

help a writer

October 24, 2008 Leave a Comment

Holly Lisle is helping out a fellow writer. Clickety-click:

Pssst! Help Zette.

Filed Under: random

and the “Duh, dude” Award goes to…

October 21, 2008 2 Comments

… this little gem:

Jhayni awoke, thrashing in the sweaty tangled sheets like a panicked swimmer in water.

In water, as opposed to, say, Jell-O. Or lava. Or orange juice. *headdesk*

Progress: 137/244 pages

Filed Under: season of rains

recession and the writer

October 21, 2008 Leave a Comment

Darren Rowse over at Problogger has some tips about recession-proofing your blog.

Now, I don’t earn any income from blogging (though, full disclosure, I did sign up for the Amazon Associates program and use that when I link to books I review), but I liked that he said to not panic and stay positive. There is a lot of doom ‘n’ gloom out there; in the news, in the IRA statement I made the mistake of looking at (yikes!), floating around like miasma in the air. People are concerned and with good reason, but it’s no good obsessing over every point drop in the stock market.

For one thing, worrying kills creativity. I’m a world-class worrier, so I know this all too well. It’s something I’m vigilant about guarding against, because all it does is make me miserable over things I cannot control, a (grumpy) bear to live with, and saps the creativity right out of me. So, here are a few of my personal tips for keeping worries at bay:

Prayer. I may not be able to control my circumstances (or the stock market or the elections or the economy) but I can lay my concerns at the feet of the One who does.

Write it out. The act of writing down my worries is cathartic, it’s emptying myself off all that pent-up stress and putting it away elsewhere.

Turn off the TV. Granted, I haven’t received a TV signal in six years, so that makes it easy. *grin* But the media seems fixated on bad news (sob stories sell??) and it’s pretty easy to panic with all that doomin’ and gloomin’. I’d rather get some hot chocolate and curl up with a good fantasy (escapist) novel.

The Simple Dollar has some suggestions for remaining calm in such economically hard times.

What about you? Are you concerned about the economy? Is it affecting your writing? How do you deal with your worry?

Filed Under: writing process

more boring progress

October 19, 2008 1 Comment

SoR revision 2:

121/244 pages

I axed a one-page scene, the only scene that was not from Jhayni’s POV. Turned up some inconsistencies that I need time to figure a way out of. There’s a lot of “who knows what and when did they know it?” going on in this book. Sad to say, I don’t know the answer to that question half the time!

Filed Under: numbers, season of rains
October 16, 2008 3 Comments

SoR revision 2 progress:

88/245 pages

I’m hoping to get another 50 pages revised this weekend. I’ll post up another progress report on Monday.

Filed Under: numbers, season of rains

beating back the blogging blahs

October 14, 2008 Leave a Comment

Paperback Writer has a list of suggestions for uninspired bloggers. Don’t be surprised if you see a few of them tried out here in the next couple of weeks.

Filed Under: blogging

statistics and other lies… I mean truths

October 13, 2008 3 Comments

I just remembered to update my Submission Tracking Spreadsheet (Ta-Dah!). I actually have one of those, and I’ve been really really good about (not!) keeping it updated, ever since I started submitting short stories in the Dark Ages (2003), way back B.C. (Before Children).

I was quite impressed with myself to discover that I have submitted 42 times and that, in spite of my low success rate, I keep doing it! Go, me! Go, persistence! The story that was submitted the most (9 times) is The Most Beautiful Woman in the World (otherwise known as The Story With the Stupid Long Title) before I gave up and decided to offer it along with Here Comes in the Bride in an e-book that you can download here. The runners-up, at seven times out each, are Second Sight (which found a home) and Ill Met by Afternoon Light (which didn’t).

Incidentally, what is it with me and long titles?

Alas, none of my humorous stories found homes. Proof that I’m not as funny as I think I am? Or maybe long title overload caused editors’ brains to frizzle and garnered instant rejection: Ill Met by Afternoon Light, In the Lair of the Dark Lord (goodness, could I have come up with a more ponderous beast of a title?) and A Plague of Chicken (which I still think is a cute title and a cute premise).

Ah, I see that I cunningly disguised in the Lair of the Dark Lord by renaming it Prophecy’s End later on, but failed to lure an editor into accepting it.

Some day, I will go back to these old old stories and see how cringe-worthy they are. If they are specially egregious, I will post up snippets and we can all laugh at them.

How about you? Any awe-inspiring submission statistics to share?

Filed Under: numbers, short stories
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