Dream journaling is that staple of creativity-enhancing courses that I’ve always skipped in the past. Honestly, my dreams are just not as interesting or coherent as the stories I come up with when awake. They largely involve me neglecting to study or show up for classes and thereby failing the Super Important Exam That Determines The Rest of My Life–Dum Da Dum! (gee, no, I’m not reliving the anxiety associated with my academic career, no sirree!).

But, I thought dream journaling might be a fun experiment for a couple weeks. I haven’t been recording daily, but here’s what I’ve gleaned from my badly-scribbled morning notes:

1. I actually dream every night. In fact, I have at least two, possibly more, distinct dreams.

2. I dream quite frequently about being in a house FULL of rooms. Rooms upon rooms upon rooms. In the latest iteration of that dream, we were staying with some friends whose decent-sized house had turned into a MANSION of high-ceilinged rooms with huge floor-to-ceiling windows. And I was creeping around this house in the middle of the night to meet with a spy (I know that plot point comes straight from Quartz!).

In other versions of this theme, our house has been many many times larger than it really is. Considering that we’ve had to remodel this place room by room, I was not thrilled by being confronted with rooms full of peeling wallpaper, asbestos-backed linoleum and ancient bathrooms with rusty claw-footed tubs. In one dream, house also had a porch exactly like David’s rental when he was bachelor and a side alley exactly like the one of my childhood home…

3. My dreams are also populated by people I barely know: moms I meet while waiting for my kids to be done with gymnastics/dance/swimming, old high school acquaintances I haven’t seen or spoken to in years. They often play major roles, which accounts for some of the bemusement I often feel in my dreams.

4. In some of my dreams I am me. And in others, I am someone else, like a bubbly college student (that was last night), some blonde(!)  named Ivy/Evy, or a character in a MWT novel being chased up endless spiral stairs by Roman soldiers.

5. So far, I have not found anything that is the least bit useful for fiction writing. In fact, the only dream I can remember that inspired a story idea is one that David had. Which I appropriated because he’s not doing anything with it.

Do you dream journal? What kinds of dreams do you have? Do they help with your creative process, or coping mechanisms, in any way that you can tell?

Coloring is often dismissed as boring busywork or a creativity-killer (and when it’s forced on a child, I agree it can be so). That said, my children will often want to color of their own volition. I find coloring to be soothing, allowing my hands to work, pencils and markers gliding across the page, while my mind is elsewhere. Coloring is companionable, everybody sitting in comfy silence, broken only by requests for a particular shade of green. And, when there are so many beautiful and fantastically detailed drawings to choose from, coloring is just plain fun!

This week, the kids and I put up a rainforest (complete with trees named Tom, Bob and Ben) mural in our back hall. While looking for rainforest animals to inhabit the mural,  I came across these fantastic offerings by children’s picture books writer and illustrator Jan Brett. Her whole site is full of eye-pleasing coloring pages.

An art blog (I forget which, otherwise I’d give credit), linked to this lovely clipart site a long time ago. Many of these illustrations would make great coloring pages.

Where would we be without lists of the best? Here are (someone’s take on) the Top 10 Coloring Pages Websites (note: not all of these are free).

Dover publishes some real little gems of coloring books.

How do you view coloring? What memories are associated with it? Do you have any favorite coloring sites?

It’s warm, sunny and GORGEOUS out here. My Friday Fun was taking the kids to the park after lunch. The last time we were there (before all the snow and cold weather), Baron was not yet walking. It was so much fun to see him crunching through gravel and clambering over the wooden structures to keep up with his sibs today.

best part: All three kids swinging in a row, with me administrating pushes as necessary and calling out “Pump, pump! Pump your legs NOW!”

funniest/potentially bad parts: Sir I. yelling at the bottom of the slide: “I’ll catch the Baron, Mommy! I’ve got him!” So I send the Baron down and as soon as Sir I. sees the 25-pound toddler hurtling towards him, he jumps back and Baron plops onto the gravel (and pops right back up, unfazed). What was that about catching your brother, Sir I.??

Next time, I made sure that I was at the bottom to catch the baby. Sir I. tries to help the Baron get in position on the top of the slide, but Baron insists he comes down on his tummy. Well, at least he didn’t insist on coming down headfirst as well!

The not-fun part: David not being around to come to the park and enjoy the beautiful day with us! I missed him.

Writers need to get outside and get moving, too! What’s your favorite outdoor activity? Do you run, swim, or garden? Do you like to wander the woods taking pictures of flowers (that would be me!) or sit on a dock with your toes in the water? What memorable (in a good way!) outdoors experiences have you had?

Ah, names. Sometimes characters come to you with names neatly affixed; other times you have to sweat and curse and cudgel your brains and the dictionary, trying to pin down that elusive Perfect Name.

When I’m in the position of having to come up with a name, the first thing I do is to look at my worldbuilding notes, especially on cultural inspirations and language, for help. The Changeling is set in an alternative medieval Europe, so I went to a baby name website to look at Celtic, Gaelic and Germanic names for my characters. Often I know what sound I want the name to start with, which limits my choices. I like my names to have appropriate (or deliciously ironic) meanings, as well.

Season of Rains includes both Indian and Greek-inspired cultures, so I focused on names that sounded like they might come from those cultures (for instance, a lot of names that ended with -es). For Kai’s book I developed some rudimentary language, and made sure that my names followed the language conventions. So if the language of culture A does not have the ‘l’ sound, I cannot name their purebred queen Lamila. Similarly, if in culture B the -in suffix is feminine, my macho warrior dude cannot be Kevin.

Sometimes, though, you’re in the writing flow and cannot stop to come up with names. So you end up with placeholder names–and they end up sticking. Two brutes-for-hire in SoR are graced with the thuggish names of Thurgor and Ragor. One of the antagonists in Quartz bears the name of a smelly cheese (all hail the Marquis of Rocquefort!). Some day, I really must change his name…

How do you come up with names for your characters?

My brain is fried. Today I: schooled a kid, managed a battle campaign against the playdough crumbs all over the floor of the kids’ bedroom, helped lead an art program at the library in which over a dozen kids did this awesome space and rocket collage, drove a lot, went to my church’s small group. Agenda for this evening: blog, revise, veg (ha!).

All of you probably know I write. You might have heard me mention “homeschooling” and “driving kids around”. You may even know I take piano lessons, and love it. You may not have known that I enjoy doing art with my kids, and have made some forays into doing art with other people’s kids. Yet, these are just a few of the hats I wear. I suspect you all wear lots of hats as well (fedoras, berets, tricorns…. okay, I couldn’t resist the joke!).

In the comments, tell me about something you do that is not writing fiction. Maybe your day job is Python Handler. Maybe you collect fine china. Maybe you volunteer at a soup kitchen.

What is one of the more unusual hats you wear?

Recommended Reading: Define Yourself

Eep! I’m cutting it really close with the timing of this post. Only 3 hours left of Friday!

Nobility have them: baronets, barons, earls, dukes. So does the military: privates, corporals, sergeants, lieutenants and so on. All institutions have hierarchies. We grade gemstones and hurricanes, ski slopes and rockfaces, stars and planetary bodies. Part of being human is the insatiable desire to name, sort, classify and rank.

Why should your black-ops military group or magic order be any different? Perhaps you have a far-future military whose various types of battleships need classifying. Or you need to come up with houses for your boarding school, or breed names for the griffins that your protagonist raises.

This week’s fun is to come up with cool names for whatever it is you’re ranking. For one of my short stories, I named my ship types after birds: eagles, gulls, kestrels. My one magic ship was known as a raven. While David was working on his book Storm Rider, we brainstormed animal names for the various intensities of different types of storms (for example, the sandstorms increased in rage and vigor from scorpion, to tarantula, to asp, to cobra, and finally, phoenix). Why settle for Cat 3 and Very Bad when you can be more creative?

With Valentine’s Day coming up (and the Chinese New Year falling on the same day), I’ve been thinking about all the different celebrations I know of and sorting them into different categories.

There are beginning-of-life celebrations, such as birthdays, naming days and baptisms. There are rite of passage celebrations, like graduation, wedding showers, housewarmings and baby showers. There are end of life rituals like wakes, and days to remember the dead (Memorial Day, Day of the Dead).

There are celebrations around religious and historical figures and events (feasts of the Saints, Christmas, Eid al-Adha, Fourth of July). One of these is the English (is celebrated in other parts of the UK as well?) Guy Fawkes’ Night, which celebrates the failure of a guy to blow up Parliament by shooting off fireworks and burning him in effigy. I’ve always found that one odd and amusing.

There are seasonal celebrations, and those that mark events of agricultural importance. Winter Solstice celebrations, harvest celebrations, fertility rites all come under this. I expect hunting societies have their own share of hunting-related rituals and celebrations, though none springs to mind immediately.

My sunless world of Quartz has a moon with a funky orbit. Twice a year (their definition of year), it stays in the sky for double the “normal” time and goes around the horizon in a belt-like orbit.  The denizens call this Girddlesday and this is the time for contracts–marriages, treaties, trade agreements, and the like.. After the second Girddlesday of the year (let’s call this the Greater Girddlesday), the people mourn the disappearance of their primary celestial light source. When the moon rises again on New Year’s Day, they celebrate with performances, free food and drink, parades of large animals (very rare on that world).

If you could create a celebration, what would it be? What kind of celebrations would aliens on Jupiter have, or the folks on a colony ship that has been in space for generations? What would selkies or vampires or avian-humanoid hybrids celebrate?

Bread and cheese. Dried beef and hardtack. The ubiquitous stew. Food in fantasy can be remarkably dull. I always appreciate unusual cuisine in the books I read. I love a well-written dinner party or tea. I love attention paid to food in stories, the preparing and eating of it, even if it does make me feel hungry (like right now–this post is making me hungry so I’m keeping this one short).

Here’s a raw snippet from Quartz that takes place around a platter of stuffed mushrooms. Rafe is the protagonist, and Isabella is this maddeningly mysterious woman he’s been searching for. Right now she’s pretending to be a servant at a ball he’s attending, and he just spotted her:

“Aren’t you going to stop and wave that platter of delicacies under my nose?”

Her back was to him; he just saw the merest stiffening of her shoulders before she turned in one smooth movement and held out the platter. “Forgive me, sir. I had not seen you. Would you like to try some of these delightful little stuffed mushrooms?” Her face was expressionless, her voice cool.

Rafe stared down at caps in varying shades of black and brown, some smooth and uniform, others white-flecked. Their filling oozed out the sides. He pursed his lips, and, like the elderly gentleman, let his fingers hover above the mushrooms.

“Lady Brightmoon is known for her attention to little details. Look at this one pearled all over with fish paste, and that one with the bright blue filling, that precisely matches the hue of that urn behind me. I wonder what gives it that peculiar shade.”

“I don’t know, sir. I can ask in the kitchens, if you like.”

“No, I don’t like, actually. I want this platter right in front of me for now.” Her arm must be hurting from holding out that heavy silver thing, but it was nice to have her be at a disadvantage for once. Rafe stood between her and the door, and the ballroom and foyer were full of milling crowds. Even if she threw the platter at him and ran, she wouldn’t make it far. Running through crowds was about as effective as swimming in syrup, unless you had someone go in front of you shouting “Leper!’

“Do you think this stuffing is made of silverfin guts? They make me nauseous. I would hate to lose the contents of my stomach all over this polished floor—and your lovely borrowed costume.”

“Floors can be cleaned. So can clothes.” Her extended arm still held steady at both wrist and elbow, the platter was exactly where she had first raised it to.

Rafe selected a mushroom with a spiced bread and onion stuffing and popped into his mouth. He took his time chewing and swallowing, then proclaimed. “Superb. My compliments to the cook.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him,” she said, oversweet, with a touch of bared fangs in her large smile. “Finished, sir?” The platter was motionless, waiting for his reply, as though it were a point of pride with her to be the best servitor she could be.

“With the platter, yes.” Rafe lowered his voice. “With you, no.”

Isabella raked him over with a smouldering-coal gaze. “You mistake my role, sir. I only serve food on platters at parties. Nothing more.”

Good goddess! Did she actually think that he would have indecent designs on her? Besides the wanting to shake her at times kind of designs, that is. He would’ve laughed, if he weren’t so incensed with her taking that tone of moral outrage. After all, she was the party-crasher, not him. And he did not for a moment think that she was here for a night of honest work, for once.

“I imagine that it is strange for you to be here as a servitor,” he said, still low, almost growling. “When you could’ve been here as a Marchioness.”

The platter dipped alarmingly, and both Rafe and Isabella put out their hands under it to steady it. His hand caught hers; her cold fingers cradled briefly in the warmth of his palm. Rafe pulled back as if burnt just as Isabella shook his hand off. He settled for grasping the nearest edge.

A couple strolling in, the girl’s hand chastely on the youth’s arm, glanced at them. Rafe said, “Be careful, miss, you nearly tipped the mushrooms onto my breeches. I never thought the help here would be so careless” for their benefit—and his own.

“Sorry, sir.” Isabella snatched the platter from his fingers, then added in a fierce whisper. “I wish I had dropped it on your foot. Why can’t you learn to leave well alone?” Louder, she added, “There are more pastries out in the smaller supper room. Sugared flowers, honeyed marbled chips, liquered chocolates. This way, sir.” She spoke loud enough so that several pairs of eyes glanced over briefly to see who the glutton was, and stepped out into the foyer.

Rafe smiled ruefully at her back. He had no doubt he deserved the embarrassment after his own petty behavior.

What unusual foods do you have in your stories? Have you written scenes in which food is a major component? Do you have any favorite books that feature food heavily (non-fiction included)? Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Salt: A World History include several recipes from days gone by, most of which are um.. interesting, at least. I draw the line at eating fragrant rotted fish (at least for myself and my family–my characters, not so much), though. What awful things have you made your characters eat?

Snow is…

feather-flakes spiraling through the air

mashed, broken, crumpled, crushed, miraculously whole flakes on my black gloves

a soft silent assault on the sleeping world

wet clumps falling–plop!–on my windshield as I drive under trees

a white coverlet under which roofs slumber

windblown powder on cheeks and in eyes

scrunch-squish-scrunch under my boots

crusty, ugly, dirty piles around the driveway

I love the changeablity of snow. How it appears in so many aspects, how it can be soft and hard, beautiful and ugly, many-textured, many-formed. How it transforms the world.

There are so many things that have variations, moods, shades and nuances. A tree changes through the seasons of the year. The sun changes as it climbs the sky and descends again. The moon waxes and wanes. The sea is changing and moody. And a person–well, a person can be delightful and exasperating and patient and frustrated and still and exuberant, all wrapped up in the same package.

What do you love and find inspiring, in all its variations?

Ideas come to me at the oddest moments. I was passing a truck on the highway about a week ago, did the quick sidelong glance at the monster beside me, and my brain flashed “turtle!”.

Maybe it was something about the angle, the curve of the headlights, the positioning of all the parts you find on the front of a semi, but it reminded me of nothing more than a snorting, determined, slightly mad turtle.

Of course, me being me, I came up with a turtle-truck hybrid to put in a far future world I’ve been putting together from fragments of inspiration for several months. Farscape has introduced the term biomechanoid into my vocabulary, a concept that fits very well into this world. Cargo-carrying,wheeled, snapping, red-eyed, repitilian, with high-domed shells–I think these will make it into the background of the story very nicely.

I enjoy an original twist on common everyday things, like transportation. I’ve read about Liveships and Brainships. In Paula Volsky’s The Grand Ellipse (sorta like Around the World in 80 Days meets World War 2 in a fantasy world), the characters get around in a number of a different ways–two-man bicycles, golems, boats pulled by water buffalo-like creatures, horses, trains, ships, and of course, their own two feet. Cables and trams and trains play big roles in my more steampunk stories. And I just get a kick out of airships.

Have you read any books with a memorable twist on transportation? Or come up with one of your own?